Manifesting features Monique Rollins's most recent abstractionist collage works, which reflect the artist's ever-evolving aesthetic acuity and deepening engagement with materiality and form. Echoing the spirit of her previous collages, Rollins combines her evolved knowledge of color and composition to build displays of spatial complexity and movement.

Her intuitive layering of string, fabric, and paper results in dynamic visual environs where movement and stillness coexist in energetic balance.

In this newest collection, softened tones provide a subtle counterbalance to the intensity of form and gesture, allowing the movement to emerge and recede, commanding the viewer’s attention. The vitality and energy of each piece manifests years of artistic exploration, resulting in a lush, inimitable voice that echoes throughout. Her discerning and masterful eye for aesthetic quality and composition is undeniable, reinforcing her place as an artist of both precision and relevance.

In his recent essay, Roberto Mastroianni writes about encountering the works of Monique Rollins. They have “the same effect as hearing a song by Hendrix: you find yourself in front of images that are an alchemy of colors and shapes, of suggestions and emotions, and that have a profound musicality. You find yourself in front of works that are the result of gestures, actions, and interior tensions, that produce abstract signs and shapes, and that seems to be the result of a subtraction rather than an addition as if the pictorial practice were aimed at reaching the essential, eliminating the superfluous. Furthermore, there is always a skillfully created amalgam, even when it comes to simple watercolors or drawings, which, as in alchemical processes, leads to the transfiguration of matter and shapes, in order to give life to non-figural representations with an intimate and spiritual character. This is even more evident in the latest cycle of Mixed Media works from 2024, in which not only color, surface, line, gesture, and the typical forms of painting and drawing are in constant and dialectical expressive dialogue, but also in which recycled fabric materials are integrated into the composition through a masterful use of collage.”

Wind and Sea, 2024, oil and fabric on canvas, 39.5 x 37.5 inches, stands as a compelling example of Rollins' indefatigable exploration into the possibilities of creating spaces through an abstractionist lens. It is impossible to pinpoint a singular recognizable structure, yet it nonetheless evokes a vivid, immersive atmosphere that summons the viewer into its constructed spaces. Rollins effectively creates living worlds where one can wander, linger, and be enthralled by the textural depth.

The latest body of work featured in this exhibition manifests Rollins's position as a fearless and continually evolving artist, one who unflinchingly embraces the challenges of abstraction, while advancing its expressive capacities. Wherever her works appear, it is through masterful layering, inventive material juxtapositions, and a refined sense of movement, that Rollins’ richly textured realms of existence remain with the viewer long after leaving any physical or virtual space. Manifested here, Mastroianni writes, “you will find her inner world, filled with emotions, memories, sensuality, thoughts and fantasies and our common imagination, fruit of all the existential tensions that characterize us as human beings.”