“Faccia d’angelo / Every angel has another face,” an exhibition by New York-born and Sicily-based artist Lola Montes opened at Nino Mier Gallery on July 16, 2022. The exhibition comprises hand-painted ceramic tiles, reliefs, sculptural vessels and candelabra, and will be on view at its Glassell Park gallery from July 16 – August 27, 2022.

The exhibition’s title, Faccia d’angelo / Every angel has another face, refers to an Italian idiom deployed with playful irony to deem someone as hiding something more duplicitous under a grace face.  Angels abound in Montes’ work, from her paintings to her candelabra. Ascending Souls, for instance, is a six-tile painted ceramic composition that depicts a series of elongated figures rising up to the heavens with a chromatic expressionism reminiscent of late El Greco. Her fascination with the supernatural world is evoked through her fast, fluid brushwork that suggests spectrality, as though Montes catches her figures in a magical, rare moment of visibility. In her Angel projections series, Montes constructs egg-shaped vessels with cutouts of angels on their sides.  When a candle is placed in the center of the ceramic, the angels, carved in various postures mid-jump, dance across the walls. They flicker and flow in a manner paralleled by the swirling blue painted on the ceramic’s surface—until the candle is out, at least.  These elusive, impish, and fleeting angels reveal the “other faces” of Montes’ ascending souls.

On view: July 16, 2022 – August 27, 2022

What: “Faccia d’angelo / Every angel has another face,” Lola Montes
Where: Nino Mier Gallery, Glassell Park, 2700 W Ave 34, LA, 90065
Website: https://www.miergallery.com/