Clare Rojas (b. 1976, US) is among the most influential artists of her generation. Her multifaceted visual language—which is informed by a dynamic range of influences, including Post Modernist abstraction, classic portraiture, and narrative storytelling—transcends limiting descriptions such as objective versus non-objective. Her imagistic painted worlds welcome an ever evolving cast of elements that add myriad layers of possible meaning to the work.

Rojas’s work has been exhibited extensively in such vital institutions as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA; Headland Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA; Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA), Glasgow, Scotland; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA; Watari Museum, Tokyo, Japan; Museum Het Domein, Sittard, Netherlands; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, León, Spain; Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN; Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA; and Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE; among many others.

This work represents an extraordinary glimpse into a crucial moment in the development of Rojas's rare talent.
 In the early 2010s, after taking a break from painting to refocus the intentions of her practice, Rojas entered a period of fruitful experimentation that culminated in her transition from folk-inspired figuration to abstraction. This period resulted in the creation of the stunning body of abstract paintings documented in her monograph Plain Black: Abstract Paintings by Clare Rojas. Timeless and whimsical, the Plain Black paintings mark the formative stage of Rojas's shift towards plasticity as content: an evolution in style which saw her flat, colorful, abstract forms take on an almost narrative emotional presence. They signify a groundbreaking time when Rojas first mapped the liminal space between geometric and biomorphic abstraction, defining the distinctive visual language she employs today.