About

Gargobre (b. 1988) is a contemporary visual artist based in New York whose practice spans painting, mixed media, and works on paper. Working primarily with oil, pigment, and collage, they create layered compositions that investigate the relationship between imagination, culture, identity, and autonomy.

Their work emerges from a sustained inquiry into the imaginal mind — that generative space where personal memory intersects with collective cultural narrative. Each painting traces the invisible architectures that shape how we become who we are: the inherited symbols, family mythologies, and cultural codes that form the substrate of identity.

Central to this practice is the question of autonomy — how we construct selfhood within, against, and through the traditions we inherit. The work neither romanticizes heritage nor seeks to escape it, but rather occupies the liminal space where individual will meets generational transmission.

Their paintings have been exhibited in galleries across New York, Los Angeles, and internationally, and are held in private collections throughout the United States and Europe. They have participated in artist residencies including those at the Vermont Studio Center and the Wassaic Project.

They received their MFA from Yale School of Art and their BFA from Rhode Island School of Design. They currently live and work in Brooklyn, New York.

My studio practice begins with accumulation — gathering fragments of personal archives, found imagery, and cultural detritus that carry the residue of meaning. These materials become the raw substrate from which paintings emerge through a slow process of layering, erasure, and revelation.

I work iteratively, building surfaces that contain their own history — each layer partially obscuring and transforming what came before. The finished work preserves traces of this process, inviting viewers into a temporal experience where past and present coexist.

Color emerges intuitively, often beginning with earth tones and evolving toward unexpected chromatic relationships. I resist predetermined palettes in favor of allowing each painting to discover its own visual logic through the accumulation of marks and decisions.