Trap Door: Andy DeLapp, Gabrielle Medina, Ester Tuva
Opening July 18, 6 - 9 pm at Winona Gallery
On view through July 18 - August 1
Hours by appointment
Email winona@winona.biz for the address or to set up an appointment <3
Limited-edition zines available for pickup at opening.
What’s an illusion to a contemporary painter? Rather than attempting to prove their technical prowess, Andy DeLapp, Gabrielle Medina, and Ester Tuva twist the rules of perspective to play ironic or self-referential jokes. The visual tricks and puns in these paintings remind viewers they are, in fact, looking at paint on a canvas in the shape of other forms, asking us not to get too lost in the forms themselves. This ask is, ultimately, a prompt to wonder about the line between reality and fiction, made complicated by each painting’s precarious barrier between its content and the world. This prompt is ultimately an ask to wonder whether these works present trapdoors: secret or accidental ways out of the narrative dilemmas of our time.
About the Artists
Andy DeLapp is a trans-masculine artist based in Seattle, WA. He established his career while achieving his BFA from Cornish College of the Arts in 2023, where he discovered his practice as a representational oil painter. After completing an internship in object conservation at the Seattle Art Museum, art history became an inspiration and a central part of Andy’s practice. In 2025, he was named a finalist in the Neddy Artist Awards and was recognized as a Highly Commended Artist in the Homiens Art Prize, an international artist grant. Gabrielle Medina is a Mexican American painter. She was born and raised in Tucson, Arizona, where she received her Bachelor's in art history and studio art at the University of Arizona. She received her Master's of Fine Arts from California College of the Arts. She is currently living and working in Oakland, CA.
Ester Tuva is a painter and weaver based in Oakland, CA. Her work is inspired by silliness, embarrassment, and guilty pleasures: moments that belie performances of coolness or detachment. A reverence for meticulous craft also plays a key role in her work. She hand-weaves the canvases and uses hand-controlled methods on the floor loom to add patterns and text into those weavings. Her latest undertaking is learning woodworking to create custom structures for my paintings.
Tuva graduated with an MFA from the California College of the Arts in 2022. Prior to CCA, she studied Psychology and Gender, Women, & Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington.
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