Collecting Fragments represents a journey of healing and reformation for artist Veronica Peralejo.

Influenced by recent travels particularly her trip to Japan, the artist creates a long table arrangement, a sort of wabi-sabi inspired rock garden. It's the philosophy of wabi-sabi which delights in the Japanese aesthetic concept that finds beauty and serenity in objects, landscapes, designs that are simple, imperfect, and impermanent. The debris fragments are hand-selected by the artist and have varying details where the natural color of the rubbles is treated like blank canvases. The sculptures for this exhibition are different iterations of wrapped rubbles found at construction sites, “My environment in the last 3 years,” says the artist.

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The construction debris used as found objects aligns with Veronica’s creative process where she would often pick up discards and deconstructed components, and then reimagine the pieces as unique objects on their own. “I have always wanted to explore works that involved wrapping, because of the haptic process. For me, it represents healing and mending, caring, and tenderness.”

It is through visualization, and translating experiences, especially abstract emotions into tangible forms that helps Veronica process her melancholic nature. Her usual choice of material to integrate with found objects is self-hardening clay which she loves to knead and mold because it not only molds into the form she makes, it also casts the artist’s fingerprints and the strokes made by her hand. The modeling process for Veronica is highly intuitive, and almost meditative. 

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The installation of wrapped sculptures invites the viewers to step closer, wander, and even for a few seconds, micro-meditate in the imagined landscape. Veronica says, “I see these and other experiences as turning points, as fragments that I need to gather to gain a renewed self-awareness.”