Descripción de la Exposición
Alejandra von Hartz Gallery is very pleased to present Background, a solo exhibition by Karina Peisajovich. This is the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery and will feature new color pencil drawings and a light intervention. The show runs from April 14 to June 4, 2016. There will be an opening reception with the artist on Thursday, April 14, from 6 to 9 pm.
Peisajovich explores the material constitution of the image more than that of representation. Whether through her environmental lighting projects as in her drawings, she alters the sensory experience of the viewer and at the same time, prompting him/her to wonder about the construction of his/hers own perceptual process. In her own words "I think of visuality as an unnatural and imaginary phenomenon, fragile, contingent and constructed at the same time. From all of this are made the images in which we live".
With their absolute formal nudity, the drawings titled "Gradient" can be seen as time encrypted in color. The palette of these works is organized based on the tension produced by chromatic relations, manifesting the unstable parameters of the eye.
"All that sinks into light is the resonance of what the night submerges" *, it is an intervention of the Gallery’s illumination system. Peisajovich alters the existing electrical system and the disposition of the space’s lighting fixtures, changing their role and orientation.
In relation to this work, Peisajovich says: "In the latest Light Works I was more focused on using the already existing illumination systems of the premises where I was invited to show. In art spaces, especially in museums, lighting is used to impart a certain theatricality to the works. There is something of overacting in this operation. In this sense, these works disarm and absorb this setting."
In both, the drawings and the intervention of light, appear the idea of the pictorial background, not as an inert support, but as an active space which realizes imaginary expectations. As produced by the fluctuations of the natural light in an environment, backgrounds are planes where latent forms that have not found their place are projected.
*The title of this work is taken from the film “Passion” of Jean Luc Godard.
Karina Peisajovich was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1966, where she currently lives and works. She studied at the National School of Fine Arts Prilidiano Pueyrredón Buenos Aires (1988), and later she participated in residencies such as the Guillermo Kuitca Program for Artists at Fundación Proa in Buenos Aires (1994-1995) and ART OMI in New York (1999). She also received the Argentine National Endowment for the Arts Creation Grant, and a Fulbright Commission Fellowship to participate in the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York (2002). In 2012 she received the Konex Award to the Visual Arts in the category Installation.
Teaching is an important part of her artistic practice. Since 1997 she has been teaching color in a seminar created by her that is entitled “Solocolor”. From 2014 she is part of the faculty of Universidad Torcuato Di Tella where she gives a seminar entitled “Ni lleno, ni vacío: investigations in space”.
Some of her exhibitions in Argentina are at Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Sala 13 y Sala 19, ciclo Bellos Jueves, 2014), at Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (El aire tomará esta forma, 2013), at Centro Cultural San Martín (Lejos del Sol, 2013), at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (Ensayo de situación: Karina Peisajovich y Diego Bianchi, 2011), at CC Recoleta, Bs. As. (Teorías, 2010), and at Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, (Contemporáneos 17: iluminaciones, 2006).
Outside Argentina she exhibited in México at Museo Experimental El Eco (Máquina de hacer color, 2010) in Miami at the Frost Art Museum in collaboration with MACBA, Bs As. (Color on Color, 2011) and at the Freedom Tower, Miami Dade College, (SmArt, 2010), in Richmond at the VCU Anderson Gallery (Surface Charge, 2005) and in Madrid at Casa de América (Paisaje Doméstico, 2002).
She also participated in the 7th. Mercosur Biennial: Grito e Escuta, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 2009 and in the Lodz Biennial, Poland, 2004.
The Exhibit will run from April 14 through to June 4, 2016, with visiting hours open to the public Tuesday to Friday from 11am to 6pmn and Saturdays from 12 noon to 5 pm.
Exposición. 30 abr de 2025 - 14 sep de 2025 / Varios espacios de Madrid y otras ciudades españolas / Madrid, España
Formación. 30 oct de 2025 - 11 jun de 2026 / Museo Nacional del Prado / Madrid, España