Paola Oxoa (b. 1979, Medellin, Colombia) is an American artist currently based in the Hudson Valley, NY. Oxoa’s work centers on a singular visual form developed privately over more than a decade. The form first appeared in 2013, following an experience while traveling in a dugout canoe, where Oxoa registered the dissolution of boundaries between her body and the surrounding environment. The resulting awareness of energetic continuity remains a central premise of her practice. In 2023, after an extended period of drawing, she began painting with this form. Her process is structured and intentional, attuned to the energy perceived in the environment and body at the time of making. The surface of each painting records these conditions, indexing shifts in presence through the application of paint. Oxoa’s work engages the legacy of postwar abstraction and systems-based practices. The form operates less as motif than as vessel—an architecture through which perceptual, energetic, and temporal states may be transmitted. Her practice is shaped by broader inquiries into structure, language, and non-verbal modes of communication.
Oxoa has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, CO, Stay Gallery in Denver, CO, and Matteawan Gallery in Beacon, NY. Her work has been included in numerous group shows including at The Mattatuck Museum (Waterbury, CT), MCA|Denver (Denver, CO), White Columns (New York, NY), Harper’s Apartment (New York, NY), Mother Gallery (Beacon, NY), my pet ram (New York, NY), LACE (Los Angeles, CA), High Energy Constructs (Los Angeles, CA), and PFA Gallery (Washington, DC), among others. She was awarded the first New Pick Residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, CO in 2004. Her work has been covered in publications such as The New York Times, NYLON, Art in America, and Two Coats of Paint. Oxoa’s work is held in the Bass Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami Beach, FL collection. She received her BFA in animation from the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design in 2004.