Juxtapoz Magazine – Cristina BanBan: Mujeres @ Skarstedt, NYC
3 min readSkarstedt is delighted to announce our upcoming exhibition, Cristina BanBan: Mujeres. Featuring a suite of new function, the exhibition marks BanBan’s first clearly show with the gallery considering that the announcement of her representation with Skarstedt in April 2022.
Each of the paintings on look at are titled either Mujer or Mujeres, Spanish for lady or ladies. This phrase gets to the heart of BanBan’s exercise, which remains consistent in its subject matter make any difference even as she continues to mature and evolve as a painter. Women—their bodies and contradictory emotions—are BanBan’s core topic. Via their varieties, she is able to filter her each day experiences and huge array of influences on to the canvas. The result is a sequence of performs that are at the moment private and common.
The several gals in BanBan’s universe do not meet the viewer’s gaze, nor do they automatically engage with people all over them. Whilst this may perhaps discuss to the pervasive feeling of isolation in our contemporary modern society, it also underscores the authority and self-assurance of these figures. BanBan’s girls transcend voyeurism as they stand or lounge resolute in their electricity, belying hundreds of years of preconceived thoughts about nude women of all ages in portray. Their nakedness feels intentional, normal, modern—they are attractive but not sexualized, and they exist on their individual conditions. The significant scale of both equally the canvases them selves and the women of all ages that inhabit their fields of coloration are intentional, allowing the figures to envelop the viewer although commanding notice, regard, and admiration. Likewise, the substantial hands and eyes so characteristic of BanBan’s oeuvre evince a stately still personal presence. Stylistically, these women of all ages have transitioned into classical, pretty much sculptural sorts configured in Renaissance-esque preparations, revealing BanBan’s deep affinity for art background.
As BanBan’s follow proceeds to evolve, line and shade have taken on new roles. Charcoal and oil adhere have been launched into her compositions, a byproduct of her recent changeover to oil paint. The presence of these materials lends a graphic high-quality to the paintings, offering viewers a glimpse into her method and including a sense of immediacy. At the same time, her palette has turned to large, gestural strokes of earthy tones—sky blues and rich browns, mossy greens and burnt reds. Though these hues floor the figures in an impression of truth, they are structured in this sort of a way that these women of all ages look to hover in a minute devoid of discernable time and spot. As these, the narratives of these paintings grow to be increasingly open. These maturations in her follow evoke the get the job done of Willem de Kooning, whose delicate equilibrium of abstraction and figuration, coupled with a revolutionary depiction of the woman form, has propelled BanBan towards a newfound liberation of subject issue, transcending narrative composition via a concentrate on the pure painterly characteristics of line, color, and form. It is this quest to uncover how to be simultaneously summary and referential that defines this new chapter of BanBan’s oeuvre.
Throughout the functions on view in Mujeres, BanBan incorporates her have visage into her paintings together with that of her good friends and other people today from her day-to-day existence as a usually means of reflecting on her own particular experiences. In this way, her paintings perform as something of a diary, and the current exhibition as a glimpse into BanBan’s inner globe.
Continue to be tuned for a attribute on BanBan’s new do the job in our Winter season 2023 Quarterly, out late November 2022.
