How reliable is memory? Can a moment, freed from the constraints of time and space, be reborn on canvas? Philadelphia-based artist Mariel Capanna explores these questions in her third exhibition, Commonplace, at Adams and Ollman gallery. By taking ordinary landscape paintings into a speculative dimension, she investigates the fluidity of memory.
The inspiration for Capanna’s new works is both contemporary and nostalgic: she creates her paintings by watching old 8mm home movies of family vacations and road trips, anonymously uploaded to YouTube. Her painting process becomes a race against time to capture what she sees as these digital reels play. In her own words: “I start each painting without a real sense of where it will go. My only expectation is that each one vaguely recalls a landscape.” Her distinctive color palettes are drawn from eclectic sources—an afternoon spent with her son, inspired by the hues of a t-shirt, helmet, or grass; an album cover; or another image lingering in her mind.
Capanna’s works are filled with vibrant pools of color, dense layers of paint, and gestural strokes. Her brushwork incorporates imagery from American road trip iconography—rivers, fences, sun hats, birthday cakes. Ever-shifting landscapes, seen through multiple car windows and camera lenses, converge on a single pictorial plane. Distant roads, seasonal changes, and countless encounters intertwine in one image.
These dense, “chunky” brush marks unite opposites—past and present, here and there, presence and absence—on a chaotic surface. Commonplace invites viewers into a fragmented yet cohesive visual continuum that defies the constraints of memory and time.
Exhibition Details:
Artist: Mariel Capanna
Title: Commonplace
Venue: Adams and Ollman, New York City
Dates: On view through October 25, 2025
