Gina M.

SELLING THE NEW NORMAL

Jan 7 – Jan 20, 2024

Laid out like a storefront display, Gina M.’s Window Dressing installation, Selling the New Normal, features pieces

resembling familiar elements from a classic American classroom, with bright primary colors, blinking lights,

chalkboards on the wall, and a patriotic desk supporting a tower of colorful blocks. The sculptures playfully

introduce children to a horrific new normal. Look closer. The poem on the American Alphabet reads, “A, begins

Assault Rifle, a weapon of war. B, is for Bullet, that shoots through a door.” The soft sound of children's songs plays

in the background. Meanwhile, fragments of police radio chatter and breaking news bites drift in intermittently,

overpowering the songs, only to fade back afterward. With America's safety protocols in place, the media's

modulating repetition of horrific facts, and the ever-increasing frequency of domestic terrorism, gun violence in

America is normalized. Selling the New Normal renders the invisible visible, revealing the apathy and indifference

toward the emotional well-being and security of the next generation. Each piece in the series reflects a sardonic

commentary on the subconscious conditioning of America's children, which normalizes domestic terrorism, while

demanding that they simply “deal with it!”

Describing her practice as “whimsy with a dark side,” Gina M. is a sculptor, painter, and found-object assemblage artist using seemingly

innocent childhood imagery (like teddy bears, toys, puppets and games) to create reactionary expressions of her inner emotional life. As the

child of puppet theater operators, nurtured by puppets and their puppeteers, she developed an affinity for the anthropomorphic, which

ultimately helped her cope with and accept the divorce and divide of her family. In college, she studied interior design and color theory at

the Fashion Institute of Design, and studio arts at Pasadena City College. She worked on Kent Twitchell’s Colorado One Mural Project, and

received private training in painted trompe l'oeil, faux finish, and decorative wall treatments. Her work has been exhibited at Gallery 825,

Blue Roof Studios, the Irvine Fine Arts Center, El Camino College Art Gallery, MOAH at the Lancaster Museum of Art, Orange County Center

for Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, and the Boone Family Gallery at Pasadena City College. Her solo

exhibition, Through the Toyshop and Behind the Curtain, was featured at the Huntley Gallery at Cal State Pomona College.