LAUREN PORTADA

THE FARAWAY NEARBY
 

September 24 - October 30

Reception September 24, 4-6 PM

 

The gallery is thrilled to announce a solo show of new paintings by Lauren Portada.

 

With a title taken from Rebecca Solnit's 2013 rumination on a writer’s life, each painting in The Faraway Nearby depicts an interior, domestic space with a window view to a vast wilderness beyond. Painterly nods abound, with sly and earnest references to Cezanne, Matisse, and Gauguin. The spaces are rendered with thoughtful accuracy, but little distortions intensify our perception. Passages of paint are interrupted by collaged shapes of painted linen. Shafts of light become opaque. The hot sun beats down. The cat on the table is purring. The relationship of home to wilderness is a reliable engine for narrative, and in each of these paintings Portada offers a container for story, whether projected or decoded.

 

“Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice.” Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby

 

Lauren Portada recently relocated from Brooklyn NY to West Orange NJ. Previous exhibitions include Transmitter Gallery (NY), Trestle (NY), Kristen Lorello Gallery (NY).  She has exhibited nationally and internationally in New York, Chicago, L.A., India and Norway. Portada was one of ten founding members of the artist-run collective Regina Rex located in Brooklyn and Manhattan from 2010-2018. She has held residencies in India (Fulbright); Svalbard, Norway; Vidgelmir Cave, Iceland; and Skowhegan. Portada has an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
 

Image is "Launch," 2022. Acrylic on linen with cutouts. 48 x 38 inches.