We are thrilled to present a series of new paintings by Ana Balcazar Bartra created over the summer and fall months in Estonia.
These works will be on view through the end of the year. Limited edition art prints are available for purchase as well as a series of greeting cards.
JUNGLE POP
Ana Balcazar Bartra
This exhibition gathers works by Ana Balcazar Bartra made this summer in Tallinn, Estonia, but inspired by her most recent trip to the San Martin Region, in the peruvian rainforest, where she participated in the mural festival Amazonarte Peru. Ana started this new series of paintings after making large-scale flowers on the walls of 12th and Ash Streets, in Erie, PA, in what turns out to be her first mural in the United States, where she presents the Peruvian jungle flowers unfolding in a book as if this would be a fantastic story.
Jungle Pop brings together North American pop art as well as Peruvian popular art, converging in a direct portrait of tropical plants, as they are part of the popular amazon culture in Peru, and a commodity of decoration and beauty for sale in the global market. Nevertheless, these flowers and plants are naturally growing in tropical and paradisiac environments as Juanjui, nowadays they are taken to grow somewhere else as part of popular consumption as amazon culture is traveling too. The artist was surprised at how common it is to find these plants in the Northamerica and European supermarkets for mass sale. The tropical plants represent the wild, the beauty of nature, and at the same time they are a souvenir that exports exoticism.
With this new work the artist proposes new ways of botanical painting, exploring how to represent plants as sort of photographic portraits or silk screen advertising posters. For this new series of acrylic on canvas she works from a friend´s photos or pictures taken by herself, and from her own drawing notes made in situ. The artist intuitively chooses which characteristics best portray details that she wants to highlight of flowers and leaves, through solvent brush strokes with flat backgrounds sometimes and in some cases from the sketch, loose “unfinished” lines, to more elaborated gestures of light and shadow, giving three-dimensionality and movement.
Ana´s paintings materialize the beauty of botanicals in an unconventional way, in some cases, and in some others under clear visual art theories, but undeniably influenced by Peruvian popular culture, like Chicha, which is a diverse cultural manifestation characterized by neon colors on street poster advertisement for cumbia concerts. Ana makes decisions of color and texture bordering Fauvism and Chicha* aesthetics, with complementary contrasts and fluorescent colors. Even when she is trying to work on plants from a personal vision it's impossible to escape from her cultural heritage.
Versión en español
Esta exposición reúne obras de Ana Balcázar Bartra, realizadas este verano en Tallinn, Estonia, pero inspiradas en su más reciente viaje a la región de San Martín, en la selva peruana, donde participaba en el Festival de murales Amazonarte Perú. Ana trabaja esta nueva serie de pinturas sobre lienzo luego de la realización de flores a gran escala en las paredes de 12 and Ash Streets, in Erie, PA, en su primer mural en los Estado Unidos, donde quiso presentar la selva peruana desplegándose de un libro, como si fuera una historia fantástica.
En esta nueva serie de acrílicos sobre lienzo, que Ana trabaja a partir de fotos de amigos o que ella misma toma, de apuntes de dibujos hechos in situ, y explora formas de representar las plantas a modo de retratos fotográficos o poster serigráficos publicitarios. A través de la pintura en lienzo, la artista explora intuitivamente qué caraterísticas retratan mejor aquellos detalles que quiere resaltar de estas flores y hojas, a través de decisiones de color y textura, que rozan con el fauvismo o lo chicha, con contrastes complementarios y colores flouresencentes, a veces con fondos planos, para proponernos nuevas formas de ver la pintura botánica, desde el bosquejo, el trazo suelto “sin acabar” hasta, en algunos casos, el detallar más la luz y sombra para dar tridimensionalidad y movimiento.
Jungle pop, trae a colación el pop art norteamericano, así como el arte popular peruano, donde convergen en el retrato directo de un elemento que hace parte de la cultura popular, en este caso la flora como elemento simbólico de la selva peruana, la flor como ícono de belleza y sourvenir, de exportación de exotismo. Estas mismas flores pueden ser encontradas en supermercados de europa y norteámerica, para la venta masiva, así como también pueden ser encontradas de forma salvaje en un paraíso llamado Juanjuí.