DCKT Contemporary is pleased to present Playland, Maria E. Piñeres’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. Piñeres’s signature medium of stitched needlepoint places the nude figure in an optical duel with the eye-catching graphics of the pinball machine playfields and backglasses of her adolescence.

Playland, a now defunct 1980s’ Times Square gaming arcade, stood as a shiny, visually stimulating beacon to youth, nestled in perverse contrast with the then ubiquitous porn palaces, peep shows and sex shops. Piñeres’s works set youthful rent boys and pin-up girls into the contextual backdrop of pinball, where their sexuality can be seen in a playful and sentimental light void of shame and smut. Preserving the common pinball themes of luck and chance, the Latin phrases that appear as machine names lend airs of levity and existentialism, alluding more to the real game of life than one of fantasy.

Hic et Nunc (Here and Now), Ex Malo Bonum (Good out of Evil) and Caveat (Beware) are among Piñeres’s largest works to date and their heroic nude figures enliven more narrative landscape scenes. Varied stitching patterns and angles create a mixture of textures and added shading, allowing for the expansion of the image graphics while referencing historic Bargello needlework. The Latin phrases recontextualize the imagery and mask the actual pinball game names, which are often double entendres.

Piñeres lives and works in Los Angeles. Other solo exhibitions include Walter Maciel Gallery (Los Angeles). Group exhibitions include Stitched at the Armory Center for the Arts (Pasadena, CA), Pricked: Extreme Embroidery at the Museum of Arts & Design (New York) and Celebrity at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (Scottsdale, AZ). She has been included in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Time Out New York, The New Yorker, Time, The Village Voice and V.