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Painted Geometries is Alejandra Laviada’s most recent work and ... more >> Contemporary art collector and diplomat, Juan Carlos Bendana-Pinel definitely put aside his career to open a gallery in the Parisian district of Le Marais in 2008. The focus was placed on creation in all its forms (painting, sculpture, photography, video, installation, drawing) and a program laying great emphasis on international artists, mostly European and Latin American.
Painted Geometries is Alejandra Laviada’s most recent work and reflects her ongoing interest in exploring the relationship between photography, painting and sculpture. Having started her career in painting and later delving into photography, Laviada’s practice centers around creating works that rise from the intersections between these different mediums. The resulting images defy being categorized into a single type, and aim to question and redefine photography’s shifting role within the context of contemporary art.
The photographs depict various wooden objects that are painted white and photographed in the artist’s studio. The surface of each photograph is then hand painted to create a new image composed of different geometric shapes. The white brushstrokes visible on the wooden objects put into question which parts of the image are photographed and which ones are painted, blurring the lines between representation and abstraction, between the real and the constructed.
Entering the gallery space is like entering into one of these painted photographs. One finds oneself surrounded by triangles and geometric forms; some painted directly on the wall, some created by the light reflected from the colored triangles on the windows, and others as pyramidal sculptures scattered along the space. These elements become building blocks for a visual language that extends onto the photographs, collages and sculptures presented in the show. In conversation with the images, they expand the dialogue between the photographic and the sculptural, the image and the object.