Insistencia Material presents two artistic approaches that explore the persistence of materials and their capacity to trigger experiences of perception, memory, and transformation. Inspired by their personal fragility and that of the Puerto Rican context—where precariousness and beauty coexist—Ivelisse Jiménez and Margarita Vincenty, through painting, assemblage, collage, and installation, create compositions that intentionally remain open and indeterminate, where the presence of durable plastics coexists with organic forms. These elements generate a space of doubt and intuition, where the viewer confronts the gaps between perception and understanding.

Both practices utilize fragments but do so from complementary positions. Vincenty develops her work based on a direct relationship with the environment, collecting plastic waste, wood, and discarded objects, reinterpreting them through abstract compositions that allude to the life cycle of matter and its capacity for regeneration. Her practice explores the ecological and poetic dimension of the act of collecting and transforming. Jiménez approaches materials from a deep interest in language, perception, and the construction of meaning. Her work focuses on space, the body, and the gaze as triggers for reflection on consciousness.

Insistencia Material alludes to the stubbornness of these materials in the contemporary landscape, but also to their power as triggers for reflection and questioning. The exhibition engages with biologist Humberto Maturana's ideas about autopoiesis, understanding matter not as a passive residue, but as an agent that participates in processes of self-organization and co-creation, revealing the complexity of living systems.

Ivelisse Jiménez's (b. 1966, San Juan, PR) installations and assemblages present visual propositions regarding change and the construction of meaning in dialogue with the inhabited space. Painting is the point of departure for installations, assemblages, and mixed-media constructions that reveal contradiction and simultaneity. Jiménez uses disparate materials that serve as veils, blurring pictorial elements and making them translucent —forcing viewers to search more intensely for the components and languages that make up her work and consider how perception, language, and thought processes take place.

Margarita Vincenty's (b. 1963, Rolla, MO) assemblage practice works through a creative use of found, common, and sometimes trashy materials. The artist bases her aesthetic on the relationship between the object and its configuration, placing particular emphasis on two aspects: the manufacturing process and manipulation of the material, and the materials themselves. Informed by her environmental, social, and political concerns, she creates compositions that are pleasing, joyful, and hopeful. A dentist by profession and an artist by necessity, Vincenty considers her work to be Caribbean and sustainable Arte Povera.