Stanek Gallery is proud to present Allegory, a two-person exhibition featuring new work by painter Valerio D’Ospina and sculptor Katherine Stanek. Perception, belief, and the construction of reality, propel the narrative of this exhibition as each artist explores how meaning is formed, presented and ultimately accepted or rejected. Approaching their practice from a common principle stated best by Alberto Giacometti, "The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity,” D’Ospina and Stanek present viewers with beautiful, thought-provoking visuals steeped in deeply existential and potentially transformative questions. Conceptually and technically, both artists challenge themselves to confront what feels familiar and stable, asking whether comfort and recognition are sufficient grounds for truth, or merely its shadow. Valerio D’Ospina’s new paintings mark a subtle but significant departure from his previous work, introducing shifts in technique, color palette, and subject matter that open a more fluid and exploratory visual dialog. Responding to fractures in contemporary systems of communication, D’Ospina examines the uneasy terrain between fact, belief, and manipulation. In Stage 11, he depicts the Apollo lunar module Eagle, an image historically burdened by conspiracy theories, as an archetype intended to represent the larger discussion of “what is” in the face of “what it seems”. Referencing both Apollo 11 and a Hollywood soundstage, the title invites viewers to interrogate their own assumptions about how we accept evidence, authorship, and truth individually and as a society. His work vibrates with an urgency as if it’s calling us to action. Abstracted brushwork and disrupted color function as visual glitches, lending the image a sense of static motion that is both whimsical and monumental. Underscoring the persistent human responsibility to question what we are shown, D’Ospina is asking if we can come to terms with the version of reality we are most willing to defend as truth, even if it means confronting and accepting our own ignorance. An intriguing departure from her signature concrete figures, Katherine Stanek’s new sculptural works continue her investigation into perception and psychological reality through the deconstruction of familiar forms. Her evolving Vessel Series is rooted in the idea that the brain does not process reality itself, but its most stable version, often allowing comfort and recognition to override truth. By fracturing and reassembling traditional vessel forms, inserting organic elements, and exposing surface imagery like fossilized records, Stanek replaces original function with a new reality of equal value. Humanity subtly pulses through as bodily extremities intertwine and emerge from masses, simultaneously acting as uplifting supports and grounding roots, forming a visible bridge to her earlier body of work. Titles such as Ego, Regret, Ignorance, Pain, and Pleasure frame the work as part of a cyclical human condition in which perception distorts truth and growth emerges only through disruption. The resulting sculptures are psychologically charged, physically assertive, and quietly unsettling. “This exhibition is giving us incredible visuals on the surface, while commanding some serious processing power once you dive a bit deeper,” comments Stanek Gallery’s Manager of Curatorial Affairs Victoria Rosenberger. “You’ve got two artists approaching truth from opposite ends of the same fracture: one destabilizing images, the other destabilizing objects, both asking, ‘What do we trust when familiarity lies to us?’” Together, Allegory positions painting and sculpture as parallel acts of inquiry, beginning in spontaneity, gesture and controlled transformation, each in the physical and metaphorical pursuit of evolution. The exhibition invites viewers to consider if they can step beyond the temptation of comfortable complacency toward uncertainty, uneasiness, and potential clarity that truth demands, and how much they are willing to endure in search of deeper understanding. Allegory opens with an artist reception on March 14 at Stanek Gallery in Little River, Miami from 6-9 pm.