In Visibility

Christine Lafuente is a painter whose work delves into the interplay of light, space, and personal memory, often drawing from her experiences as a first-generation Cuban American. A graduate of Bryn Mawr College, she earned her Certificate in Painting from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and her M.F.A. in Painting from Brooklyn College in 2004. Her early years in Philadelphia, where she served as artist-in-residence at the Fleisher Art Memorial, laid the foundation for a career marked by solo exhibitions across the Mid-Atlantic, including a notable show in London in 2008. Represented by Gross McCleaf Gallery since 2002, Lafuente has consistently explored themes of visibility and absence, transforming architectural spaces and fleeting moments into luminous canvases that invite contemplation. Lafuente's practice often pivots around intimate connections to place and loss. In her exhibition 'The View from Here' at Gross McCleaf, she presented paintings created during lockdown in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, capturing the fluidity of interior and exterior spaces in Spanish Caribbean architecture. This body of work sought to bridge her identity with her father's childhood in 1940s and 1950s Cienfuegos, Cuba—a culture known to her only through stories and photographs, tragically interrupted by his death in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Through sustained observation and rhythmic mark-making, her paintings embrace beauty amid darkness, encouraging viewers to find solace in the immediate and the seen. Now based in Brooklyn, Lafuente teaches at Pratt Institute and continues to exhibit widely, including at Morpeth Contemporary in New Jersey and through events like the Gowanus Open Studios. Her approach to painting—whether in oil, watercolor, or graphite—emphasizes chance encounters with changing light and form, rendering the familiar anew. In upcoming shows like 'In Visibility,' her work promises to further probe the tensions between presence and obscurity, offering a visual poetry that resonates with universal experiences of displacement and discovery.