Scroll is pleased to present a three-person exhibition, featuring new works by Raina Lee, Elena Rivera-Montanes, and Alejandro Sintura. The three artists come together to present their own distinct interpretations of personal history, memory, and environment.
In her latest series of "slab glaze paintings" - flat ceramic works that blur the line between painting and pottery through stoneware surfaces and glaze alchemy - Raina Lee captures interior and exterior scenes inspired by her 2023 travels through rural Japan. During this period, she participated in traditional wood-firings in the Yamanashi prefecture near Mount Fuji and visited several Mingei (folk art) museums across various cities. The works reflect a thoughtful consideration of format: the larger pieces (6 ½ x 9 ½ inches) reference the proportions of Japanese woodblock prints, while the smaller ones (4 ½ x 6 ½ inches) evoke the scale and intimacy of souvenir postcards. Continuing her recent foray into painting and figuration, Lee uses these ceramic surfaces to trace personal connections to the histories embedded in the places she visits, as well as the sensory richness of everyday encounters.
Elena Rivera-Montanes' paintings explore themes of time, loss, and the quiet rhythms of everyday life, focusing on domestic interiors that often hold personal significance. Using a nostalgic color palette, she pieces together fragments of memory, overlooked quotidian moments, and elements of personal history to create layered narratives, encouraging viewers to connect with their own memories and reflect on how the past and present intertwine. Building an assemblage of these in-between spaces, Rivera-Montanes captures the way memories fade, overlap, and are continuously reshaped.
Alejandro Sintura's compositions are rooted in his personal memories and observations of the world around him. Through simple, unassuming subjects - everyday still lifes, moments flitting outside his studio window, and fragments of landscape - Sintura captures the delicate, fleeting nature of the moment. By carefully rendering the way light shifts and falls at particular moments, Sintura captures the fragile, transient nature of existence, inviting viewers to pause and consider how seemingly ordinary scenes hold within them a subtle impermanence.
Together, the three artists' practices intersect through a shared engagement with memory and the subtle imprint of human presence. With varying visual languages, Lee, Rivera-Montanes, and Sintura each construct layered spaces - domestic, psychological, and urban - where traces of the past hover, and identity is shaped through both absence and presence.
Raina Lee (b. 1976) lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She received her BA in Sociology from the University of California, Davis, and her MA in Media and Film Studies from the New School for Social Research, New York. She has exhibited with Stroll Garden, Los Angeles; Niche Gallery, Los Angeles; Laisun Keane, Boston; Nucleus Gallery, Portland; and Studio Ima x Casa Ahorita, Mexico City, among others.
Elena Rivera-Montanes (b. 1998) lives and works in London. She received her BA with Honors in Fine Art: Painting from Wimbledon College of Arts, London. She has exhibited with PM/AM Gallery, London; Painters Painting Paintings; WOAW Gallery, Singapore; Lychee One Gallery, London; and GRIMM Gallery, London, among others. This is her first time exhibiting in the United States.
Alejandro Sintura (b. 2000) lives and works in Bogotá, Colombia. He received his BFA with Honors from Javeriana University, Bogotá. He has exhibited with SGR galería, Bogotá; Nueveochenta galería, Bogotá; Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Stockholm; Warbling Collective, London; and Gallery Monti 8, Latina, among others.