Mari
Eastman
From November 18th to December 17th 2005
It is a great pleasure
to present an exhibition with new paintings and drawings by Mari
Eastman.
Los Angeles-based artist Mari Eastman presents a strangely seductive
world inhabited by soldiers, hunting dogs, and Native Americans.
A unifying theme is perhaps a common preoccupation with nature as
a stage for contest and battle.
Though sometimes created from artistic fantasy, the source material
is mostly photographic. Eastman explores contemporary picture making
and draws our attention to how the world is represented. A portrait
of a child soldier thus becomes equivalent in one sense to an image
pulled from an old book on dogs, both paintings also referring to
traditional bourgeois art.
Eastman plays a sophisticated game of high and low art genres utilising
a certain offhand beauty.
She moves from painting to drawings to illustration and beyond,
working on canvas, on paper and on the wall. Her compositions spread
out from the actual works and transforms into black marker wall
drawings. She draws on canvas and paints on paper, at the same time
working with the texture of both surfaces.
The use of glitter is one of Eastman's signatures. For Eastman,
the glitter is part of a self-conscious but nevertheless sincere
exploration of girlishness and glam embracing the varied motives
but also underscoring poignant areas in the compositions.
The nonchalance and spontaneity with which she appears to work is
in the end belied by the elegance of the results. Apparently childish
images rendered with all the skills of an experienced painter. She
manages to make every mark count while appearing to do anything
she pleases as soon as it occurs to her, no hesitation.
We are happy to welcome
you in the gallery.
Kind regards,
Galleri Nicolai Wallner
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