Taney Roniger & Soledad Arias - Luminous
September 6th - December 24th, 2025
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HOUSTON, TX - Gallery Sonja Roesch is pleased to present “Luminous,” an exhibition
of selected works by two New York artists. Each with her own distinctive approach, both
artists treat light a material substance with powerful poetic and affective capacities.
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For Arias (1959-2020), light conspires with language in utterances embodied as neon
sculptures. Arias’s neons refer not to words but to the involuntary sounds made during
speech or to language that has been suppressed and not spoken. Quietly sensuous in
their presence, the neons encourage contemplation of the bodily dimensions of
language. In other works, strips of mirror greet the viewer at eye level, revealing subtle
phrases inscribed on their surfaces. In both bodies of work light functions as a medium
of communication, calling attention to the complexity of human relations.
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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.
