Tiger Strikes Asteroid New York is pleased to present, “Alchemy of Transmutation” A two-person show featuring the works of Vladimir Cybil Charlier and Marina Gutierrez.

Alchemy, is concerned with the transformation of matter. Visual art is a language that shifts the viewer's perception enabling the artist to transform meaning through materiality and symbolism. Charlier and Gutierrez are masters of this visual transmutation of symbolism, history, and materiality.

Vladimir Cybil Charlier’s multimedia practice marries traditional visual elements from Haitian Culture and Afro-diasporic religion with western cultural elements, a hybridization if you will... Referencing the succinct practice of aligning various Catholic saints with African( Vodun, Santeria, Candomblé, Ifa...) Orisha’s who have similar characteristics, Charlier transmutes contemporary Western Icons aligning them simultaneously with specific saints in the catholic pantheon and specific Orishas. Likewise, her series of hand-beaded bottles reference the tradition of Haitian "bouty bottles", the spirit holding blue bottles in the south and the allegorical sculptures of Kiki Smith with whom the artist worked with at The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

Marina Gutierrez’s interdisciplinary work speaks from a place of personal experience, contemporary issues in society, a concern with nature/ecology and the beauty of both found manufactured and natural material. Visceral and perceptive current runs through her sculptural and painterly works, pulling from her Puerto Rican roots, her community, and her acute observations of contemporary social issues. The vejigante mask appears in her work in multiple forms, as self-portrait but also as a symbol that connects and mimics the passage of time and the shape-shifting continuity of colonialism. Originally used in celebration of the Catholic Spanish victory over the Moors, it later became a contemporary symbol of resistance to colonialism and imperialism in Puerto Rico.

Charlier has been a resident at the Studio Museum in Harlem and more recently, at Fountainhead studios in Miami. Her work has been featured in the 2006 Venice Biennale and exhibitions at El Museo del Barrio and The Bronx Museum. She participated in the Biennial del Caribe in the Dominican Republic, the Cuenca Biennial in Ecuador, and the Panama Biennial in 2003. Her work has been included in Le Grand Palais in Paris and shows such as Relational Undercurrents at MOLA, Bordering the Imaginary at BRIC House, Caribbean Crossroad at the Perez Museum in Miami, and a solo exhibit at Five Myles Plus Space. A lifelong educator, Charlier lectures regularly and recent talks have included the LASA congress in Boston, Columbia University, Rutgers University, the CUNY Graduate Center, and Notre Dame University.

Gutierrez is a multidisciplinary artist from NYC whose work combines Community, Public and Studio Arts. She received NYC Arts Commission Design Awards for the DeBurgos Center and Imagination Playground, Prospect Park – also Joan Mitchel, Mid-Atlantic and NYFA/Painting Fellowships. A ‘Helio-chronometer’, cultural sundial on P.S.72 in East Harlem was a collaborative project with Architect James Cornejo. Gutierrez co-authored 'ART/ VISION / VOICE Cultural Conversations in Community' with Amalia Mesa-Bains and Tomie Arai and was the director of the Cooper Union Saturday Program. Through two LMCC Governors Island residencies Gutierrez developed 'Drawing Water', a performative, mobile, public project. Using harbor salt water with oxidizing metals, visitors' stories became precipitation prints. Gutierrez' cross disciplinary narratives intertwine poetry, conceptual art and cultural notions (a veritable commingling of Pablo Neruda, Hans Haacke and La Llorona).