antesis

We’re pleased to present "antesis", a solo exhibition by Luz Carabaño (b. 1995 in Maracay, Venezuela). This is the artist’s first exhibition with the gallery, and her first in Europe. "antesis" is the moment in which a flower blooms, expanding in all directions. Entering the exhibition, we observe images that allude to the natural world unfold in front of us – unfolding into individual moments of transformation, times of day, at its core the opening of the flower bud. It is that process of emerging and continuously transforming that Carabaño’s paintings explore; the process of coming to life, anew. Carabaño’s works share a soft hue palette and uniquely shaped canvases, proposing different ways of looking and engaging with images that are ever shifting. From the subjects’ drafted inception, each work embodies a response to sights and gestures that the artist encounters; Carabaño crafts the wooden supports to take on individually-shaped organic forms. Linen is then meticulously stretched over the panels, which is primed and sanded to a uniform state. She works intuitively and allows for the image to reveal itself, to become something else, an echoing form. In the painting "sol" (2024), we view Carabaño’s depiction of the sun, created during a period of a partial solar eclipse in Los Angeles in April of this year. A miniature portal, the work seems to become a source of life to the orbiting images of the exhibition. With her subjects captured in a transformative state, Carabaño references different flower-like and radiating forms from abstraction to a more ambiguous but recognizable clarity. Of these abstracted forms, "antesis" (2024) reflects a shimmeringly gestural explosion, modestly alluding to the blooming subject. In "refracción" (2023), the composition originates from the refraction of light in that of an ancient vase, the subtle blue and green tones separated in dynamic brushes across the canvas. As the emphasis on shape and form depicted in "amarillentas" (2024) and "reflejo" (2024) lean into the mere silhouettes of leaves, much like an out of focus lens, both works emerge and withdraw, intermittently adjusting their aperture. In "orquídea" (2023) and "opalescente" (2023), the orchid and the iridescent white flower are in bloom, sensorially shifting, much the same as the natural world, untethered in one place. Luscious yellows and greens expand out of the picture plane, whilst latterly, "opalescente" is just contained, seemingly captured in violet dark purple night tones with the white of the petals piercing through. The paintings in the exhibition offer the viewer a soft, and almost velvety surface in which they glow with a warm luminosity. Although small in scale, the canvas shapes are like ethereal portals into a private, natural world we are invited to come in. They transform the negative wall space surrounding them, creating a strikingly visceral impact, further elevating their powerful qualities.