CURATOR’S VOICE Art Projects led by Milagros Bello presents LIPSTICK by Rosario Bond

Art Basel Night Reception
Saturday December 6, 2008
Show runs through February 14, 2009

Address:
2032 NW 2nd Avenue, Miami Fl 33127
Wynwood art district
Phone 786 357 0568

Schedule:
Dec 4: 9am-6pm
Dec 5: 12pm-6pm
Dec 6: 12pm-10pm
Dec 7: 12pm-6pm.

CURATOR’S VOICE ART PROJECTS is led by curator Milagros Bello, and its mission is to foster the contemporary arts and the new, emergent voices in the international and national art scenes. CURATOR’S VOICE ART PROJECTS works in conjunction with art institutions, museums, and galleries in the United States and abroad. CURATOR’S VOICE ART PROJECTS invites guest curators to participate in its art venues.

LIPSTICK BY ROSARIO BOND

Rosario Bond proposes neo-expressionistic paintings made out of thick layers of impasto, set over multiple drippings, disrupted lines, and child-like figures where individuals, objects, and nature intertwine in voracious relationships. LIPSTICK depicts parodies of icons, such as rock stars, models, and other iconic portraits represented through gestural brushstrokes and a bright and intense palette. Bond dislocates the modern narrative, dismantling logic and linearity in the character’s connections in the scene. She tackles and traps her figures in a challenging Meta discourse dominated by parody and humor.

Her paintings are collections of personal mythologies combined with critical imagery, posed over disrupted settings and dislocated compositions inhabited by unusual and serie objects. Her works are a monumental palimpsest of delirious and contrasting characters that allude to the feminine condition.

In her hectic and fevered paintings, full of hallucinating entities transported by rambling composition and restless scribbling lines, Bond establishes a radical dialogue with the Contemporary German neo-expressionists.

The painting Lipstick, 2008 depicts three women’s faces with sarcastic expressions. The one at the left center shows her sensuous red lips collated over the canvas, creating a sense of derision and a burlesque atmosphere. The picture plane is delimitated by two thin legs balance on a woman’s red heels, in a metaphorical allusion of an exaggerated and stereotyped femininity. The blue and turquoise pastel colors point out to sarcastic references to the feminine condition. The dominant scribbling lines on the canvas disfigure and distort shapes and forms, generating a chaotic composition. In Lipstick, Bond satirizes on the social identity of women. In Bunny Girl, 2008 the artist again refers to the feminine condition. The Bunny Girl is cynically outlined on the right side of the composition; in half body shaped by fuzzy colors and disrupted lines, she is a mutant and critical being. One of Bond’s main concerns is the status of women. In the painting Shopping Spree, 2008 Bond depicts a delirious shopping spree of three women, the one in the middle holding a Prada purse as a trophy. It is dominated by a rough composition and a disorderly combination of figures; the women are surrounded by a chaotic world. The work alludes to the wild consumerism of the day among women. In Peacock Dancers, 2007 two stylized feminine figures pose as cheerful dancers surrounded in festive feathers . Disruptive broken lines saturate the highly dramatic scene. Again, Bond’s strong allusions to critical femininity are present.

The canvas Teddy Bear and His Friends, 2008 shows numerous child like figures, distorted and covered by extreme drippings, in high contrasting yellows, reds and blues. There is a highly saturated composition crowed with curvilinear traits and irregular spots and outlines. Bond’s approach to the works gives prevalence to feelings and moods rather than to an objective realistic representation. Spontaneous lines and forms give birth to imaginary entities that relate to childhood memories infused with a comedic stanza. Bond proposes a sarcastic Teddy Bear’s vision surrounded by multiple mordant creatures that sharply stare at us as an incisive allusion to infancy.

In the work Family Furies, 2008 Bond presents two child like beings outlined in green colors and delineated through irregular contours. Multiple scribbled lines sketch the body and face; the deeply emotional eyes express sadness, concern, and isolation as humanized references – perhaps in allusion to a personal mythology or an autobiographical stance. In The Gallerist, 2008 Bond pursues the same approach of using collected memories on which to base her paintings. A derisive goat’s face and a comical blue visage stand over a crowed landscape of imaginary and distorted flowers, rivers, and plants. Here, the artist mockingly alludes to today’s complex artist-gallery relationship . Again, irregular outlines, multiple drippings, color spots and disfigured entities profile the mordant Bond’s approach to painting.

Materia Gris, 2007 exhibits a gigantic black and white dream landscape with curious flowers and segments of imaginary architectures. The calm atmosphere is disrupted by the organic violent lines of plants, and by the asymmetric composition that dislocates the realistic order of elements. This painting becomes a very peculiar work in this show. Bond has eliminated all beings and switched to a reflection on nature.

Bond’s provocative and disruptive paintings radically distanced from beauty and harmony establish an artistic connection to the highly politicized German Neue Wilde movement. In the rough approach of Jonathan Meese, Andre Butzer and Albert Oehlen, Bond offers an abysal reflection of our unsettling world.

Milagros Bello, Ph.D.
Curator of the show.