Vyana I

Tobias Tovera is an American visual artist whose work explores the intersection of nature, art, and consciousness. Tovera was born in Sacramento, California and studied at the California College of the Arts and the San Francisco Art Institute. His work has been exhibited in solo and group shows in the United States and Europe, and is part of numerous private, public, and corporate collections. Using the concept of time as a foundation, Tovera’s studio practice seeks to reveal energy systems, finding new dimensions in his materials as they metamorphose from one form to the next. The conception of his work was inspired by alchemy, medicine, and the primordial formations of living matter. From the chemistry of water reacting with minerals to a magic that reaches beyond science, Tovera’s work examines opposing elements such as nature and artifice, chaos and order, to reveal how they interact, transform, or propel each other. Tovera states, “I want my art to spark connection with nature and through process and alchemy, create a visual form that liberates both an intimate as well as an unknown aspect of the cosmos.” During the course of his career Tovera has developed two bodies of work in painting and a series of sculptures. His new work investigates the interplay between his paintings and his sculptures and how they inform each other. Tobias lives and works in Brooklyn, New York and Oakland, California and is the founder of the Ark Project, an international artist residency program. He has been awarded with residencies at the Lucid Art Foundation, Root Division, and Local Language Art and has been published in American Artwork, Studio Journal Knock, Studio Visit, and Art Voices Magazine.

'We expect art to give us a sense of connection to the world and ourselves. We expect nature to give us the same thing. Tovera’s work, in its embrace of entropy and fluidity, its references to and imitation of the natural world, plays on this parallel set of expectations. Are his paintings nature or art? Maybe they are both.'

-Victoria Gannon