Cultivate Studios’ newest exhibition, Topologies of Spirit, presents the latest body of work by emerging artist and Cultivate Project Space resident artist Gabriel Soto. During his residency, Soto has redefined the role of drawing within his practice, culminating in a series of mixed-media works that expand the very idea of what a drawing can be. These pieces—what he calls “drawn objects”—juxtapose vintage and religious photography with diagrammatic renderings of subatomic particles, scientific experiments, topographical maps, and machine schematics.

Soto approaches drawing as a multi-media process, working with wood panels, collaged photos, vellum, beeswax, transfer paper, and paint to create layered, translucent surfaces. Each material traces its own history, while together they form textured topologies that reveal depth, space, and tension across and beneath the image.

At the heart of this new work is topology itself—shape, place, form, and structure—expressed through the presence of diagrammatic drawings. Soto’s use of scientific visual language alongside religious imagery reflects his ongoing aesthetic contemplation of the Logos, the divine ordering principle of creation. In these works, diagrams, graphs, and schematics—once tools for conveying data—are transformed into symbols of a spiritual topology: the surfaces, places, and structures of the soul.

About the artist: Gabriel Soto (b. El Salvador, 1993) is an artist whose practice draws on vintage imagery, philosophy, science, and esotericism. He earned his B.F.A. in 2017 from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he trained in figurative and representational painting.

Soto’s work has been exhibited in Maryland, Washington, D.C., El Salvador, the Midwest, and online platforms. In 2023, he received the Maryland State Arts Council’s Grant for Artists. Rooted in the dialogue between archaic metaphysics and contemporary scientific ontology, his practice seeks to chart new ways of seeing and knowing. Soto is currently based in the Washington, D.C. area.

About Cultivate Project Space Residency: The Cultivate Project Space welcomes individual artists or collaborative artist teams to apply for studio space at Cultivate Studios in Kensington, Maryland.  The partially-subsidized short-duration residency results in an exhibition in Cultivate’s Hall Gallery.