Juxtapoz Magazine – Cristina BanBan: Mujeres @ Skarstedt, NYC
Skarstedt is delighted to announce our upcoming exhibition, Cristina BanBan: Mujeres. Featuring a suite of new do the job, the exhibition marks BanBan’s to start with demonstrate with the gallery given that the announcement of her representation with Skarstedt in April 2022.
Every of the paintings on perspective are titled either Mujer or Mujeres, Spanish for woman or women. This word will get to the heart of BanBan’s apply, which stays constant in its topic make a difference even as she carries on to experienced and evolve as a painter. Women—their bodies and contradictory emotions—are BanBan’s core issue. By way of their sorts, she is able to filter her each day encounters and extensive array of influences on to the canvas. The outcome is a collection of performs that are at the moment personal and universal.
The several females in BanBan’s universe do not meet the viewer’s gaze, nor do they necessarily have interaction with these about them. While this may possibly discuss to the pervasive feeling of isolation in our modern day modern society, it also underscores the authority and self confidence of these figures. BanBan’s girls transcend voyeurism as they stand or lounge resolute in their energy, belying hundreds of years of preconceived thoughts about nude girls in painting. Their nakedness feels intentional, pure, modern—they are sexy but not sexualized, and they exist on their own terms. The massive scale of both equally the canvases on their own and the women of all ages that inhabit their fields of coloration are intentional, allowing the figures to envelop the viewer though commanding attention, respect, and admiration. Likewise, the large fingers and eyes so attribute of BanBan’s oeuvre evince a stately but intimate presence. Stylistically, these girls have transitioned into classical, almost sculptural sorts configured in Renaissance-esque arrangements, revealing BanBan’s deep affinity for art record.
As BanBan’s apply continues to evolve, line and colour have taken on new roles. Charcoal and oil stick have been introduced into her compositions, a byproduct of her new changeover to oil paint. The existence of these components lends a graphic excellent to the paintings, providing viewers a glimpse into her process and incorporating a perception of immediacy. At the identical time, her palette has turned towards substantial, gestural strokes of earthy tones—sky blues and rich browns, mossy greens and burnt reds. Even though these hues ground the figures in an perception of reality, they are structured in these types of a way that these women surface to hover in a instant devoid of discernable time and put. As these, the narratives of these paintings turn into increasingly open. These maturations in her exercise evoke the get the job done of Willem de Kooning, whose sensitive stability of abstraction and figuration, coupled with a innovative depiction of the woman sort, has propelled BanBan to a newfound liberation of subject make any difference, transcending narrative composition through a aim on the pure painterly characteristics of line, shade, and form. It is this quest to uncover how to be simultaneously summary and referential that defines this new chapter of BanBan’s oeuvre.
Through the operates on view in Mujeres, BanBan incorporates her individual visage into her paintings along with that of her close friends and other men and women from her day by day everyday living as a usually means of reflecting on her own individual activities. In this way, her paintings purpose as something of a diary, and the present exhibition as a glimpse into BanBan’s interior earth.
Continue to be tuned for a attribute on BanBan’s new operate in our Winter season 2023 Quarterly, out late November 2022.