Artist Talk: Li Montalvo

Much of what we do, we do out of habit. We react before we reflect, and our patterns of thought settle into grooves we rarely notice. What would it mean to interrupt that pattern, even briefly, and choose how to see?

In this artist talk, Li Montalvo discusses Stuff of Thought, the exhibition of their paintings currently on view at the Prindle Institute. Drawing on their training in contemplative psychology, Montalvo explores the gap between habit and deliberate choice, and how the practice of pausing can become both an artistic method and an ethical one.

Montalvo will talk about how this body of work grows out of their earlier paintings on schemas, the mental frameworks we use to organize experience, and how the idea of a sacred pause translates into formal decisions like a restrained palette and precise, hard-edge lines. Because these paintings don’t narrate, they invite a different kind of attention. Montalvo will guide the audience through a way of looking at them: slowly, openly, and with curiosity about what we bring to the encounter.

Attendees are encouraged to visit the exhibition before or after the talk. This event is free and open to the public.