Angelina Gualdoni
IT IS HAPPENING AGAIN
Exhibition Dates: December 10 - February, 2005
Opening Reception: December 10, 6-9

Kavi Gupta Gallery is pleased to present the second solo exhibition of Chicago based artist Angelina Gualdoni. Gualdoni’s previous series of paintings was based on the 1999 demolition of the Horizons Pavilion, in Future World at Disney’s Epcot Center. Horizons was a ridethrough attraction that brought viewers on a journey through the history of premonitions of the future including underwater cities, a desert farming community and a space colony. Gualdoni portrayed the destruction of the building as an organic process as it fell back into the earth to begin the cycle again. It is Happening Again titles Angelina Gualdoni’s new series of work which describes an ominous shifting world that is constantly changing yet never indicating its motives as a benevolent or malevolent force. This idea of the unknown which exists under many guises - God, progress, entropy, weather, natural phenomena, violence, magic - is the change that is inherent and integral in our environment. Buildings are demolished, churches peak through a dirty skyline, parking garages seep into the ground, strip malls decay and concrete barriers are discarded becoming the subjects of Gualdoni’s paintings. These structures and symbols mingle comfortably with spills, drips, and stains on the canvas reiterating the role chance plays in all of this.

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Angelina Gualdoni
DEMO
Exhibition Dates: Dec. 13 - Feb. 7, 2002
Opening Reception: December 13, 6-9

Kavi Gupta Gallery is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of Chicago based artist Angelina Gualdoni.

For the past few years Angelina Gualdoni's paintings have been engaged in a continuing dialogue between structures influenced by utopian architecture and the surrounding natural world. The dichotomy of Gualdoni's hard slick-edged structures and her lush, painterly portrayal of nature emphasize the organic verses the artificial. The resulting environments consist of over-saturated pastels dominated by elliptic and panoramic views of architecture that linger within the history of the future.

The deconstruction of the presupposed image of the future and the cyclical evolution of these ideas has led to Gualdoni's current body of work titled Demo . This new series of paintings is based on the 1999 demolition of the Horizons Pavilion, in Future World at Disney's Epcot Center. Horizons was an in-depth 15 minute ride-through attraction that brought viewers on a journey through the history of futuristic premonitions of what the 21st century was to behold. Audio-Animatronics described life in environments such as underwater cities, a desert farming community and a space colony. As the building was demolished its guts oozed and dripped and the minimal building became organic. Gualdoni's paintings of the fallen structure are embedded with muted tones and exploding blotches of painterly remains. Different phases of the demolition are represented as the structure morphs into a monstrous heap of dirtied hues and bright pulses that are making their way back into the earth. Demo suggests that the actual destruction and recycling of these expectations of the future is more prophetic than the revelations themselves.

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