This is an exhibition of my recent paintings @ Prairie Ronde Gallery, Vicksburg, alongside Cindy Steiler, Prairie Ronde artist-in-residence @ Vicksburg Cultural Arts Center.
This latest pop-up show (with a talk from Claudio Mendoza on An opening view of Venezuela) consists of a series of recent paintings of the Caracas urban landscape that I mull over with nostalgia in exile, worrying about the turmoil, simplified to its most elemental geometric abstraction through repetition. The gaps between buildings, those undesigned spaces, have always drawn me as a theme. Simple views through rendijas — a crack or a cleft, found in my daily urban wanderings. Void spaces, partial, private, demolished, hidden, fleeting. Seen at a distance, overshadowed by concrete walls, the beautiful light still reveals colour in all its splendour. The tropical sun illuminates the ruins as graciously as the exuberant vegetation that bursts forth.
Clustered together in unchoreographed arrangements, in forgotten corners and fenced off alleyways, the ducts, chimneys, tanks, ladders and air conditioning appliances accumulate. All the apparatus that makes up the infrastructure of our comfort; hence the visual denouncement of our greedy existence and its serious ecological impact. The symbols of the things we want to control but ultimately get out of hand.
Cindy Steiler was the latest Prairie Ronde artist-in-residence at the Papermill in Vicksburg, where she was captivated by the incredible archives of the Vicksburg Historic Society and its guardians. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to share the Michigan/Chicago scene, watch her intriguing photographic process and discover our affinity for community practice/social art projects, all while working in the candystore-as-studio and then putting up this show. #moretocome #artworldsisterhood
Natalya Critchley 