moniquemeloche
is proud to present
Carla Arocha in collaboration
with
Stéphane Schraenen
Maurauders
April 27 - June 23, 2007
Since her last show By Chance at moniquemeloche in Chicago in
2004, Carla Arocha has been exhibiting extensively in Europe with solo
shows at the MUHKA Antwerp, Kunsthalle Bern, Koraalberg Gallery Antwerp,
and F.R.A.C. Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, which travelled to André
Schlechtriem Temporary, New York. Arocha is now working collaboratively
with Belgian artist Stéphane Schraenen and will present a site-specific
installation for the exhibition Marauders of hanging mirrored Plexiglas,
photographs, and works on paper.
“The work of Carla Arocha is partly based on the paradox of the
seemingly undesired deconstruction of the modernist appearance, on the
transparency also of the strategies that functioned as respirator for
the modernistic aura. Arocha's response on such paradoxes of late modernism
never take the form of pure comment or unambiguous stand, it is more the
condition in which she works. Her interest in fashion and industrial patterns
is of a whole different kind, but notions of pattern and decoration -
for that matter two taboo words in every modernistic art idiom - are important
to her work.
Arocha studied biology followed by an art education in Chicago, the city
where the New Bauhaus was founded. Chicago, as one of the capitals of
modern design, must have offered a particular context and must have been
of great influence. In any way, her perception of modernism seems to connect
more to a notion of Bauhaus design and architecture - when it comes to
a basis in natural science as well as to the sometimes modular, 'adapted'
appearance - than to an affinity with minimalism. Furthermore, in her
reflection on commodified forms of modernism (or broader, of modernity)
the art context of her native city Caracas (Venezuela) plays an important
role. The generation of artists that emerges there during the 1940s wants
to create an art that is universal and modern. Quite fast they seek association
with the European geometric abstraction. In the rich spectrum of constructivist
and geometric-abstract movements after 1950 in Venezuela, it is in the
first place the optical and kinetic tendencies that attract notice. It
is very clear that Arocha cannot be described as an optical or kinetic
artist in the traditional sense. However, she does use the demarches between
formal clarity and optical complexity, as these are present in op art,
for an arsenal of meaning that is entirely her own, or even for her own
mechanism of meaning. When in the first half of the 1990s Arocha starts
exhibiting her work, she attracts attention because of the unintelligible
character of the position she seems to take with her work based on constructivist
outlines. Circling around the paradox of the modernistic (design) object
- with its claim for universality that seems to clash with an ambition
for the self-evident and the unproblematic nature of the commodity - and
around the impossibility of a modernistic image, Arocha makes appealing
and seductive creations that deal with subjects of invisible danger and
bodily discomfort. In this perversion of modernity, Arocha does not opt
for a post-modern strategy. She does not choose to cite or sample, but
perpetrates something we could describe as vampirism. Like a vampire is
not alive but undead, Arocha's work is not modern or post-modern, but
unmodern. A seductive effigy that, like a virus, instigates a destructive
power that was already present under the surface, while the surface itself
preserves its gleam, deluding as always.”
excerpted text Gerrit Vermeiren
(c) Stammer Studio 2005
Carla Arocha (b. 1961 Venezuela, lives Antwerp, Belgium) will be included
in the 2007 Brussels Biennial: Art as Borderland curated by Barbara Vanderlinden.
She is one of four artists representing the Flemmish Community in the
travelling exhibiton Metamorphosis III curated by Christa VyVey opening
at L.A.C. Lieu d’Art Contemporian, Sigean, France then onto Museo
Abello, Barcelona Spain. Her work is in such public collections as The
Art Institute of Chicago, Benedictine University Chicago, British Airways
O’Hare International Airport Chicago, F.R.A.C. Bourgogne France,
Fundación Banco Mercantil Caracas Venezuela, Museum of Contemporary
Art Chicago, Museum of Modern Art NY, and Stiftung Bern Switzerland.
For further information please refer to our website
http://www.moniquemeloche.com/ or contact Whitney Tassie at 312.455.0299.
moniquemeloche
118 N. Peoria
Chicago IL 60607
312.455.0299
www.moniquemeloche.com
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