The very process of trying to express an unclear idea can end up revealing it. Often the most particular can speak universally and the seeming innocuous and perfunctory can illicit very personal associations. It is between these opposing lenses, micro and macro, that Ponce vascillates, chipping away at larger themes of existence, work, memory, love, sex, and isolation in some works while sifting through random, intimate, human detritus in others. The inconsistent, human quality of handwritten notations and half erasures further serve to expose and thereby explore the nature of process.

These divergent approaches result in works that are either stark and iconic or collage-like and comprised of image fragments and discarded text.

Process then, becomes an element at times overshadowing traditional concerns of composition and technique for Ponce. The finished work in this case becomes a sort of geologic-type record or broken narrative the way that tattered advertisements, grafitti, and time, ravaging an abandoned urban storefront might. The mix of mediums (acrylic, charcoal, watercolor, graphite) and juxtaposed, disparate images give a firm nod to Dadaism and Pop Art punctuated with strokes of Expressionism. Ponce's language is concise and more poetic than political. It is tempered and elegant, never bombastic or proselytizing.

GALLERY