CRISTINA BANBAN

BanBan's primary subject is the human female body, but her oeuvre'scontent is abstraction and painting itself. She interprets physique in athoughtful dialogue between figuration and abstraction, gravitatingtoward certain bodies and faces that she chooses because theirfeatures interest her, especially because of the possibilities of movementthat they propose. She conveys enough anatomical information to roother work in a realist tradition, but she acknowledges an undeniableinfluence of Abstract Expressionism and the classical Modernist lineageof painting, allowing her work to excel beyond naturalism to achieve atactile richness. BanBan relishes the central importance of mark-making and the luscious play of colour and form that are the strongestsuit of abstract art. Her paintings have evolved in recent years toembrace composition even more fully, shifting away from architecturalsettings to more amorphous spaces where foreground and backgroundare held in an increasingly dynamic interplay.

Of course, there is a bit of a paradox in reading these works in a strictlyformal way. When a technically skilled artist paints any figure or face,they themselves will inevitably be present in the composition. This isespecially true of a painter as classically trained as BanBan. She spentyears looking at her own face and painting it in the endless academicstudies that have given her the effortless adroitness that define herwork. Her own face is the face she knows the best, and so it subliminallyseeps into the work. However, the face and anatomical details presentare only an anchor for her compositions. Even those features aretypically abstracted in ways such as the removal of the iris, the flatteningof forms, and so on, to translate the body into a gestural abstraction.Further than this, BanBan speaks about how she relishes looking athistoric painting from the nineteenth century for the ways that thecompositions of these master artists can produce an almost abstractedreading - think of all those pyramidal compositions with flawlesslypainted figures that we don't really see until we eventually do.

This gets us to the crux of BanBan's work. There is an understandablemisreading that happens for some viewers because of our innatetendency to focus on faces and recognizable features as content aboveall else. Pareidolia is the term for the primal inclination that all humanshave to seek faces in patterns - it is a survival mechanism leftover fromour pre-historic ancestors' need to locate each other in the wilderness.It is also the stumbling block that risks keeping us from looking closelyat BanBan's technique instead of seeing her women as individualizedcharacters. Rather, she would have us hone our ability to pay attentionto the compelling poses and groupings that she has arranged – thebodies and limbs in dialogue with each other, and especially herluscious application of paint and the juxtaposition of color and line. It'sclear that BanBan truly enjoys the act of creating, and that her work isan invitation for us to learn to celebrate looking too. Her paintings areexecuted in a masterful manner that teeters on the edge of loosenessand defined form. There is an evocative gesture and richness in thework that produces a truly powerful experience for us to receive if wegive ourselves over to the sensuously rich experience of looking closely.

The most inviting thing about BanBan's paintings is that in actuality,they cannot be categorized or gleaned so quickly. At first glance, thereis a flattening down of the paintings' texture and nuance that occurswhen they are seen from across the room or when translated to digitalphotographs. Ultimately though, they entice the viewer to immerseourselves in each brushstroke. They are formally layered, eminentlygenerous and endlessly complex when read in the thorough andembodied in a way that they are intended. To engage with BanBan'spaintings in the most meaningful way is to embrace the gesture, time,and even tension that she has imbued them with. It is an opportunity toexperience the truly human and profound significance possible in art.

Press release courtesy Perrotin. Text: Daniel S. Palmer.