Anecdotes

Paz Rocio Mallea Rubilar
Til Will
Bonnie Smerdon
Drew Miller

August 06 - 29, 2026
Opening Reception, Thursday, August 6, 5-8pm

Gallery Hours:
Friday–Sunday, 12–5pm

Anecdotes sample from memory – borrowing scenes from the past as a lens to
view current experience. From its origin, anekdota, meaning “things unpublished”,
refers to private stories and their ability to morph and evolve through their retelling. Bringing together new works by Paz Rocio Mallea Rubilar, Til Will, Bonnie Smerdon, and Drew Miller, these artists acknowledge the flux between landscapes of the present and places that only exist in memory.

Through painting and sculpture, Paz creates biomorphic components that emerge through lines and grids. With observational drawing at the core, her work pushes past a sense of calm as she balances evolution, erasure and impulse. Til paints memory generated interpretations of landscapes. Motivated by systems of creative collaboration, Til allows his work as a musician to inform his visual art. Through painting, he invites continual collaboration as the work is viewed both in person and through screens and devices. Bonnie paints representational night landscapes. She utilizes an inverted color palette which enables dark environments to take on a bright appearance. Through the abstraction of perceived light, her work complicates the boundary between myth and memory. Drew views drawings and painting as useful means of mistranslation. Casual recollections of architecture and figures shapeshift into abstracted icons and amorphous silhouettes. Through erasure and redrawing, he allows familiar objects to be misrepresented while still holding the memory of the original image.

Sampling from the individual experience of each artist, this exhibition applies a narrative device to visual language. Together this work proposes a space where the past remains an active material available to inform the present.

ARTIST BIOS // STATEMENTS

Paz Rocio Mallea Rubilar

My work pulls from internal movement and action. Biomorphic components bubble up though lines and lattices—imagery based on decisions reining impulses. Each image is equal parts evolution and erasure. It is in the moment of shifting where my work takes form—each impression of the brush influencing the transition of the next. I suggest form, impose line, and weave dimension in order to extract from the process what is initially unknown. I consider this investigation as part of my “paint thought”.

These “paint thoughts” are steeped in contradiction and imposed memory. What I enjoy most is pushing them past the point of calm and order, then trying to reel them back or solve something that is unsolvable and answerless. In this process a painting subliminally communicates that it is finished when it teeters on the edge of too much and not enough.

The natural world is very important to me, recalling moments of light, or observed shapes like that of a seed, a plant, a bug, or even the movement of wind as it blows through leaves. These natural tensions carry into my work and inform my visual language.

Drew Miller

I view drawing and painting as a useful means of mistranslating. Beginning with casual recollections, I draw and paint people I see around town, architecture, and details of everyday objects. These once familiar forms are misrepresented to some degree and develop as amorphous silhouettes and abstracted icons. My renderings are then processed as I wipe away and repaint, make new connections between compositions, and overlap marks in different areas of the picture plane. A new image supersedes its origin, leaving only faint signs of the cartoons it has been estranged from and connecting new characters, landscape elements and architecture. I am excited by the way certain images are retained in memory, and how far removed from actual experience my description of them becomes as I draw and paint. Working within this framework allows me to broaden my standards of visual palatability by embracing and celebrating new and unexpected imagery.

Til Will

“I relate my paintings to screens. As digital displays have come to dominate the way paintings are widely consumed, I consider experiencing painting as twofold (in person and on screen), and therefore recognize that our dependence on screens has been affecting painting for years. I picture life as experiences had through screens and had through my senses in real space. Both should be considered real life, which complicates the plot of representational painting.

Impossible light scenarios and nonsensical spaces are made possible. They couldn’t be constructed in actual space to look the same as they do on screen. Dissecting this imbalance is what I call the cyber-observational painting practice, which drives my decision making in a painting.

I use subjects loaded with connotations as formal elements in paintings. I refer to them as “ambient icons” and “glyphs” because they are derived from images seen in passing, in too many situations and contexts to have a singular meaning. I use glyphs for simplified trees (palm trees, pine trees) as well as flowers (tulips, roses). Flames for example—everyone has their own unique way of drawing them; yet we always read them as flames. My approach is influenced by signage and decals, and in a similar way I draw subjects that feel universal, just recognizable enough to conjure ideas. On this basis, my paintings explore an unseen dimension that has roots in collective memory. I want the work to carry a levity, to live in a grey area between conceptuality and non-thinking. Building on simple sketches and collaged observations, the paintings maintain contact with an initial idea, often resulting in something loose.”

Til Will is a multidisciplinary artist and producer based in New York. He keeps a studio practice that involves painting, digital animation, and music production.. He recently co-curated Homebodies at 334 Broome as well as Trading Cards III at Field of Play Gallery with Paz Rocio Mallea. He also records and performs music under the moniker Immortal Wound with Paz Rocio Mallea. He is the co-creator of PilMawilla, which has produced animated music videos and motion graphics since 2021.