Mariángeles Soto-Díaz

Mariángeles Soto-Díaz is a visual artist enamored with the irresistible prowess of abstraction. She works mostly with paint, but also with paper, slides, spices, currency and UPC codes. Her work reinscribes the speculative discourse of abstraction with the pleasures of seduction, consumption, excess and the promise of relationality. From her aromatic "kitchen paintings" made with spices to her chocolate-inspired pieces, critics have written that her work posseses "an unusual intimacy that refuses to be interpreted by banal codes," and that it "vindicates painting" in a "promising synthesis of North American and Latin American geometric abstraction."

Soto-Díaz grew up in Caracas, Venezuela and holds an MFA from Claremont Graduate School, where she studied with Karl Benjamin, Rachel Lachowicz and Susan Joseph, among others. Equally formative were earlier studies with David Diao and Judith Mann, and the indelible influence of other Venezuelan artists such as Jesús Soto, Carlos Cruz-Diez, and later Eugenio Espinoza and Sigfredo Chacón.

Soto-Díaz is a graduate student in the School of Critical Studies at CalArts, and she lives and works near Los Angeles.