Fury and rack have no place in the grand vortices of Cristina Gamón. In tender splashes of color on transparent sheets, Cristina’s lyrical abstractions have us beside ourselves and swooning. “The importance is in the passion for artmaking,” she tells us about her practice via e-mail, “and the search for the sublime.”
At first attracted to the sleek finish of acrylic paint on acrylic sheet, it was how the medium allowed for the idea of layers and veils to take place that had it become Cristina’s signature technique. Just as well. Like gawking at skyglow, experiencing her art comes with the ache of knowing that a look is all one can have, and may ever will. As Cristina explains, “the works capture a moment of emotion suspended in the acrylic surface, and while this transparent barrier gives us access to it, the real sensuality the paint provides is unattainable.”
Spurred into the limelight after winning the 2011 BMW National Painting Prize in Spain at the young age of 24, what began as Cristina’s foray into this emotive style had become a single-minded devotion. And for the past nine years, she had been swimming in it. Driven to develop a visual language around color, one that could compass what she calls “the big narratives and the unspeakable,” Cristina found a natural kindling with the spiritual side of abstraction. With color as the vehicle of her compositions, safeguarded by shape, matter, and gesture, Cristina veered away from figurative elements to best portray the unknown. By way of large-scale formats, it’s vital for Cristina to enrapt her viewers in her portrayals of the sublime. Have them permeate in passes the way only color can do — and sally joy.
“It wasn’t a style I thought I would ever relate to,” she remarks. “When you leave your prejudices and throw away your rules, and allow yourself to accept something new to your eyes as valid… It is then that you find out you can be more than what you predict, you would surprise yourself with your own growth. Abstraction has become an endless path of investigation for me, one that I feel comfortable doing.”
Earthly Delights, Cristina Gamón’s second solo show with Galerie Stephanie, will be on view from July 7 – 21, 2020. For more information on the show, contact 7940-5726 or email inquiry.galeriestephanie@gmail.com.
