Skarstedt is delighted to announce our upcoming exhibition, Cristina BanBan: Mujeres. Featuring a suite of new work, the exhibition marks BanBan’s to start with show with the gallery considering the fact that the announcement of her representation with Skarstedt in April 2022.
Every single of the paintings on see are titled either Mujer or Mujeres, Spanish for female or gals. This word gets to the coronary heart of BanBan’s exercise, which remains constant in its issue matter even as she carries on to mature and evolve as a painter. Women—their bodies and contradictory emotions—are BanBan’s core topic. Through their kinds, she is equipped to filter her each day activities and wide array of influences on to the canvas. The final result is a collection of works that are at as soon as particular and common.
The many women in BanBan’s universe do not fulfill the viewer’s gaze, nor do they automatically interact with those close to them. When this may communicate to the pervasive feeling of isolation in our up to date society, it also underscores the authority and self-confidence of these characters. BanBan’s females transcend voyeurism as they stand or lounge resolute in their electrical power, belying centuries of preconceived thoughts about nude ladies in portray. Their nakedness feels intentional, purely natural, modern—they are attractive but not sexualized, and they exist on their own phrases. The large scale of each the canvases them selves and the women of all ages that inhabit their fields of coloration are intentional, making it possible for the figures to envelop the viewer although commanding focus, respect, and admiration. Furthermore, the big fingers and eyes so characteristic of BanBan’s oeuvre evince a stately nonetheless personal existence. Stylistically, these ladies have transitioned into classical, virtually sculptural kinds configured in Renaissance-esque arrangements, revealing BanBan’s deep affinity for art record.
As BanBan’s practice carries on to evolve, line and shade have taken on new roles. Charcoal and oil adhere have been released into her compositions, a byproduct of her the latest transition to oil paint. The existence of these materials lends a graphic good quality to the paintings, providing viewers a glimpse into her process and adding a perception of immediacy. At the exact same time, her palette has turned in the direction of substantial, gestural strokes of earthy tones—sky blues and loaded browns, mossy greens and burnt reds. Whilst these hues ground the figures in an effect of reality, they are structured in such a way that these gals show up to hover in a minute devoid of discernable time and place. As these types of, the narratives of these paintings turn out to be increasingly open. These maturations in her exercise evoke the work of Willem de Kooning, whose sensitive equilibrium of abstraction and figuration, coupled with a revolutionary depiction of the feminine type, has propelled BanBan towards a newfound liberation of issue subject, transcending narrative composition through a concentrate on the pure painterly characteristics of line, color, and type. It is this quest to uncover how to be at the same time summary and referential that defines this new chapter of BanBan’s oeuvre.
All over the is effective on perspective in Mujeres, BanBan incorporates her personal visage into her paintings alongside that of her close friends and other people today from her each day daily life as a signifies of reflecting on her have personalized ordeals. In this way, her paintings function as one thing of a diary, and the current exhibition as a glimpse into BanBan’s interior earth.
Remain tuned for a function on BanBan’s new work in our Winter 2023 Quarterly, out late November 2022.