|
Angelina Gualdoni
DEMO
December 13 - February 8, 2003
Vedanta 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 imbedded 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.
---
Angelina Gualdoni (b. 1975, San Francisco) lives and works
in Chicago. She is currently participating in Here and Now
at the Chicago Cultural Center curated by Gregory Knight,
Lanny Silverman, Marianne Richter and James Rondeau. Gualdoni
has exhibited in Imagined Realities at Galeria Senda in Barcelona,
Spain and Breathless at Lombard-Fried in NY. In 2001 Gualdoni
was an ArtCouncil Chicago Grant recipient.
Image:
Fruition, 2002
acrylic and oil on canvas
60" x 94"
|
