Gabriel Peralta: tight against the lids
September 20 - December 5, 2025
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 20, 6-9pm
CO-OPt Research + Projects is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Gabriel Peralta.
tight against the lids probes the conceptual boundaries of the human-animal self as it presses against the disrealities of a surveillance society that tracks, extracts, packages, and resells desire and identity to its citizens. This work experiments with the visuality of various defense strategies: denying recognition by degrading biometric markers, resisting categorization by obfuscating gender signifiers, and countering the exploitative gaze by rendering the material body as an inoperative fiction. An approximation of the artist’s body emerges through splintered forms, then spreads thin and grotesque onto canvas before dissipating into “neutral” household objects such as bath mats and ceiling fans. By challenging the viewer’s perception of whether they are seeing something intimate, the work also considers the role of exhibitionism as a transgressive act of reclaiming agency.
About the artist:
Gabriel Peralta is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores the multiplicity and negotiation of the self through ecological and social entanglements. Their work appropriates the visual language of constraint, subjugation, and suspended decay from the failing architecture of commodified reality, and uses it to reimagine animal/plant/material bodies as sites for collaborative meaning-making and liberation.
Originally from the eastern coastal plain regions of the Deep South, Peralta now lives and works on the Llano Estacado in Lubbock, Texas. They earned a BFA in Sculpture and Ceramics from Southwest School of Art in 2021, and an MFA in Sculpture with a graduate certificate in Biotechnology from Texas Tech University in 2024. Their work has been exhibited in galleries across Texas, Colorado, Ohio, and in the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art. They have been Artist in Residence at the Tablelands Bioregional Center for Art (TX) in 2022 and the Elsewhere Studios Residency (CO) in 2023.