While Arias’s work uses forms of actual light, Roniger (b.1969) creates works that

simulate light’s effects. In her large-scale drawings made with graphite and charcoal,

glowing forms evoke distinct moods or atmospheres. Inspired by universal forms such

as the horizon at sunset, Roniger’s drawings stir deep unconscious memories, including

those of our ancestral home on the Savanna. In counterpoint to Arias, Roniger’s work

addresses the silence beneath language, or what philosophers call pre-reflective

consciousness. In dialogue with each other, the two artists bring aspects of human

experience typically absent from our awareness into the realm of felt reality.

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Born in Buenos Aires, Arias moved to New York to attend the School of Visual Arts,

where she earned both a BFA and an MFA. Over the next three decades she became

one of New York’s most prominent South American artists, forging a unique approach to

conceptual art. A fellow at the prestigious MacDowell Colony, she attended numerous

artist residencies, including the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada, The Marie Walsh

Sharpe Space Program in New York, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in

Virginia. Her work has been exhibited at PS1 Contemporary Art Center in New York, the

Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, the Jersey City Museum, Socrates

Sculpture Park, Alejandra von Hartz Gallery in Miami, Articule Gallery in Montreal, El

Museo del Barrio in New York, The Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, DC, and

the Bronx Museum of the Arts, among other venues.

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A native of New Orleans, Roniger also studied at the School of Visual Arts (BFA 1992)

before receiving her MFA from Yale University in Connecticut. Over the last thirty years

she has shown her work in numerous venues, among them The Pera Museum in

Istanbul, Turkey, The Islip Art Museum in Long Island, New York, The Contemporary

Arts Center in New Orleans, and Sperone Westwater, Lesley Heller Projects, the

Flatiron Project Space, Slate Gallery, and Standpipe Gallery, all in New York. A writer in

addition to an artist, she is a former contributing critic for The Brooklyn Rail and a

current contributing writer for Interalia Magazine. A three-time fellow at Yaddo, she

recently attended a residency in Finland, where she studied the country’s contemporary

architecture. Her awards and honors include a Trellis Fund Founders Grant, a grant

from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, a nomination for the Rema Hort Mann Foundation

grant, and a traveling fellowship from the Stacey Sussman Cavrell Memorial

Foundation. For the last seventeen years she has been on the Fine Arts faculty at the

School of Visual Arts, where she teaches in the Honors Program.