Derriere la Loire, 2010, watercolor, etching, chalk on paper, 10.75×13.75 inches, 26×34 cm.
Juliana Zevallos: Landscapes of Time
September 9th - October 16th, 2010
Press ReleasePress Release
Landscapes of Time
Juliana Zevallos
Recent Paintings
September 9th – October 16th, 2010Skoto Gallery is pleased to present Landscapes of Time, an exhibition of recent paintings by the Peruvian-born artist Juliana Zevallos. This will be her first solo show in New York.nThe reception is Thursday, Sep[tember 9th, 6-8pm. The artist will be present.n nJuliana Zevallos’s recent work is inspired by nature and drawn from personal experience, combining movement in form and content in which lines sculpted in space are invested with the attributes of the employed materials. She explores notions of perception, memory, transience and the ephemeral nature of existence, combined with clarity of vision to create works that are replete with subtle tonal transitions of varying colors. There is a sense of persistent experimentation and search for aesthetic tranquility that seeks to balance spatial and structural concerns with a sensibility that speak of an inner life that is sometimes fraught with anxiety. She is aware of the creative process as a restless engagement with fleeting properties and strives to convey to the viewer the mental and physical engagement of the artist with her work. n nThe pictures in this exhibition were inspired by a recent visit by the artist to the Loire Valley region of France, and struck by the contrast in the light and grey-toned colors of the French country side and the warm colors of her Peruvian homeland, she executed a series of watercolors that synthesized concept with abstract forms that suggest natural rhythms and the spontaneous movement of matter. She uses a wide range of media including her background as a versatile printmaker to create complex and poetic works layered with meaning and surface texture where some overlapping forms are fully present, while other forms are partially obscured. They are simple, serene and as matured as thought. Closely viewed, her work is an invitation for contemplation that strives to reconcile intelligence and sensibility, knowledge and intuition as well as matter and spirit.n nJuliana Zevallos was born in Los Organos, Piura region of Peru, South America. She studied printmaking at Atelier 72 in Lima, 1977-85, then obtained a diploma in Fine Art in 1984, and in Art Education in 1986 at the Ecole Nationale Superieure de Beaux-Arts de Lima before leaving for France in 1986 where she still lives and work. She studied advanced printmaking technique with S.W Hayter, at the renowned Atelier 17, Paris, 1987-90. She also obtained an advanced diploma in Fine Art at the Universite of La Sorbonne, Paris 1 in 2007. She is widely exhibited and represented in several public and private collections in South America, Europe and the USA. Awards include the II Salon de Verano, Ancon – Pérou, 1987 and Les trophées de la Couleurs, Lefranc Bourgeois, Paris, 1996 She presently teaches at The Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Art, Rennes, France and also maintains a studio space in Lima.
Artist Statement:
In February 2009, as I visited the Loire region, precisely, in St. Pierre en Vaux, I was fascinated by the light. For the first time, pale colors, mostly in grey tones, were pervasive, and made me realize a series of water colors from which I kept a good remembrance. Since the experience of the glimmering landscapes of this French region a new series of works emerged: Landscapes of Times.
In this series, I question the intervals of life, the inscription of our course on the territories we cross, the parallels of our way of life from one environment to the other, one which the encounter with a new culture forces us to question ourselves in order to find one’s own identity.
Distance, conscience, time are at the origin of this pictorial journey. And in turn takes shape through gestures, lines, texture and color which willingly gets transferred on canvas or paper. I am trying to be as true as possible and this gives me the freedom to be able to face my creative instincts.
Color is a very important element and intervenes in a natural way in my work. I think about it as a strong psychological element. I like its fluidity and its texture which creates light or simply sets and takes its place. The use of line in my work goes on pursuing the idea of the traced, the marker, that resonates as archaic, remote, and calls for the cosmos-vision of the world as if it was coming from an atavistic inheritance.
Time makes me self-conscious of the past that creates a presence and marks the instant. It translates itself through the super-position and the juxtaposition of actions in the creative process which forms are revealed as a landscape in a continuous evolution. I notice that in the absence and the presence of movements involved in a pictorial space, time inscribes a course. Creating a link between the instant and the duration of gestures sometimes repetitive sometimes constant, in order to obtain as in music the timing or the sound.
I also use etching as a unique or multiple element. As a sort of game, I compose and recompose on different types of paper; thin, transparent, thick, stained, torn.. It is in that fashion that the intervals of time manifests itself clearly in the manner of proceeding, searching for the depths of blacks produced by eau forte.
Juliana Zevallos
Lima, Peru
July 2010