This weekend Corey Helford Gallery will be opening a trio of shows featuring the nocturnal photorealism of Korin Faught, the dark fairytales of Krista Huot, and LA based painter Mia Araujo (aka Mia). Mia’s painting feature richly layered, elegant narratives usually influenced by combinations of mythology, occultish spiritualism, and literary and artistic references. Most feature a female central character and are surrounded by a swirling, opulent maelstrom of smaller narratively significant images.
This new show was based around the idea of the invisible realm. Despite humans being such visually dominant creatures, Mia was intrigued by the idea of an “invisible realm”, where things like thoughts, ideas, and dreams reside and are concrete parts of our experience, yet cannot be physically touched or seen. This idea of operating in a type of darkness in which there dwells a whole layer of experience informs the show, in particular the largest and more dense work, “The Priestess”, in which a woman who is able to seemingly cross the threshold of the real and the fantastical in surrounded by nocturnal animals who have the ability to see quite clearly in the dark. The other smaller paintings ” and ” also reference the idea of using other senses other than sight to “see”, and the painting “Strength” is an homage of sorts to both the symbolism in the Tarot card “Strength” as well as the sculptor Rodin. Mia’s show alongside Korin Faught and Krista Huot opens Saturday, Sept 25th at Corey Helford Gallery in LA.
