Context Shift: Behind the Scenes of the Momentary’s New Mural

You may have noticed a vibrant new addition to the Momentary’s parking garage. Gone are the grey walls of the parking garage, here to stay is Context Shift, an 11,000-square-foot mural by New York-based artist Carlos Rosales-Silva. Developed in partnership with Oz Art NWA and the Momentary, the mural includes vibrant colors and mind-bending shapes, which all blend to stimulate the sense of sight.

The Process

Rosales-Silva and his team of four assistants, Christine Yerie Lee, Cassidy Fritts, Edward Salas, and Armondo Rosales Rivero, worked tirelessly over three weeks in June 2024. The team used various methods throughout the painting process, including using industrial sprayers to paint large areas and carefully hand-brushing the edges. They painted six days a week for about eight hours a day, using 100 gallons of paint.

“It’s been quite a journey, and I feel really excited to be finished but also excited to see it realized. It’s honestly just such a blessing to have a work that is this scale, but also just to be able to kind of come in here and have fun doing it,” Rosales-Silva said. 

Context Shift was produced with the support of Sargent’s Daughters, which represents Rosales-Silva. 

Out in the Elements 

Although Rosales-Silva has painted several murals before, he said painting Context Shift presented new challenges because the team painted in the Arkansas summer heat and overnight. In the design process, Rosales-Silva had to consider external factors, like the architectural elements of the parking garage and the weather conditions in Northwest Arkansas. Even though some would say these constraints might be restrictive for creative freedom, Rosales-Silva said he embraced them. 

“For some people, I think that’s really daunting. But for me, that’s like a particular kind of freedom almost. Because I have to deal with these things that are set, but there’s so many possibilities within those constraints and it’s kind of a reverse way of thinking,” said Rosales-Silva. 

At 11,000-square-feet, Context Shift is the largest mural Rosales-Silva has painted to date. Previously, Rosales-Silva painted a 3,000-square-foot indoor mural, Pase Usted, for the San Antonio Museum of Art. 

Shifting your Context 

Context Shift incorporates a core pillar of Rosales-Silva’s work: how we interpret color as contextual. “Contextual seeing” is a concept where people do not see colors in isolation; they are fully dependent on the other colors that surround them. How people perceive the tone, vibrancy, and depth of a color is dependent on what other colors are seen in relation to it. 

“I wanted there to be intense interplay of different kinds of colors that are vibrational. If you look at the mural, there’s points where the colors appear to be shaking, and it’s physically affecting your vision. That’s something that simple color work can do when the colors are complementary to each other,” Rosales-Silva said. 

The vibrant colors in the mural are inverted to represent how context shifts; colors in the background on one side are now in the foreground on the other side. The mirroring design of the mural is meant to shift perspectives on how the design elements blend together in art. 

The large shapes and fields of color are disorienting, vibrational, and overwhelming but ultimately exciting as they result in some very complex, yet attractive views looking at the mural. 

The shapes Rosales-Silva draws are abstract combinations of architecture and landscape, two forms that are often categorized in an oppositional binary. Rosales-Silva said that binary does not exist. He said humans are a part of the natural world and the large-scale effect they have on the environment is not one of domination, but one of systemic overload. 

“I don’t think that people are separate from nature, architecture isn’t separate from nature, it’s all part of one big system. These shapes are attempting to combine everything into these big, weird shapes that appear to be cutting shapes out of their backgrounds. They activate everything around them,” Rosales-Silva said.   

Turning Heads 

You can see Context Shift seven days a week at the Momentary. The Momentary’s parking garage is located at the corner of SE 8th Street and SE G Street. Admission to the Momentary is free.  

“When people come and see the mural or happen to pass by the mural, or even just drive by the mural, I hope it turns their heads. I also want them to be intrigued, excited, and curious,” Rosales-Silva said.

Ready to learn more about Context Shift? Keep reading about the mural and its installation at the Momentary,  or get to know the artist on his website and follow him on Instagram @loloafterdark.