Andres Carranza: Territorial Marking
November 2 – December 21, 2014
Tanja Grunert Gallery, New York
Tanja Grunert Gallery is pleased to announce Territorial Marking, a solo exhibition by andres carranza. Territorial Marking is about painting, the pure performative act of painting itself. The exhibition is durational and conceived in two parts; the first half will present a site-specific installation in which the artist will take over the gallery for two weeks, transforming the space into a three-dimensional seamless canvas. The installation will then be converted into an exhibition of paintings. Territorial Marking will be on view from November 2 through December 21, 2014. An opening reception for the first part of the exhibition will be held on Sunday, November 2 from 6 – 8 p.m., and an opening for the second part of the exhibition Friday, November 21, from 6 – 8 p.m.
There is an intense simplicity to Andres Carranza’s abstract paintings. Random marks and traces, layers of paint, scribbles and doodles, a sheer explosion of color. Varying in scale, his large canvases are engulfing, overpowering the viewer within their total sublimity; yet his smaller paintings offer a sense of empowerment and intimacy. An entanglement between painting and performance, the true essence of his work lies within the process itself, as Carranza states, “I feel a sense of irrational poetry latent in the humble or violent eternal qualities of paint. The meaning of the work is in its process, it’s the pure act of painting.”
Carranza’s painterly process is both physical and mental. His physicality and present-ness is crucial to the development of each work, yet it is his subconscious that guides his gestural flow as he embarks on an introspective journey. Escaping the constraints of the rational, the work emerges from latent associations tapping into what Surrealist artist Andre Breton described as “the superior reality of the subconscious mind.” A psychic state characterized as ‘pure expression,’ ‘freedom’, even ‘madness.’ Carranza hovers on the borderline of the inner and the outer world, collapsing together the physical with the psychological.
Territorial Marking explores the performative act of painting itself. It traces the work of art from the moment of its conception until its finished form. Carranza’s painterly process is as essential as the finished work itself and therefore will be emphasized within the framework of the exhibition. To achieve this, the durational exhibition is presented in two parts, an exhibition that is a process in itself. The work develops from Carranza’s initial displacement into a new space, inhabiting the gallery and physically marking it as personal territory. A primal creative energy emerges from this animalistic response to entering and taking a space as one’s own.
The installation will be on view for a period of two weeks – a time during which Carranza will continue to work on the murals, visitors will step atop the canvas and inhabit the work, dinners will be hosted within the installation, all actions which will be transcribed within the finished work. For the second half of the exhibition, the installation will be converted into an exhibition of paintings, as each mural canvas is cut and stretched into respective sizes, revealing the finished work in its totality. One wall will remain in mural form, conveying what once was.
A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition, featuring an essay by Morgan Falconer, and Foreword by the exhibition curators Mitra Khorasheh and Elise Herget.
andres carranza was born in 1975 in San Jose, Costa Rica and currently lives and works between Costa Rica and New York. Trained as an architect, his work can be positioned at the junction of art and architecture, as his artistic practice embraces material and space as primordial elements within specific environments. Carranza studied Architecture at the U.D.I Universidad del Diseño, Costa Rica and Film at Universidad Veritas, Costa Rica. Since 1999, his work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions internationally. He represented Costa Rica in the 25th Sao Paulo Biennale, and received the second Grand Prize in the 2nd edition of the Central American Biennale. In 2003, he gained recognition for his video works in Central America’s first video art exhibition Inquienta Imagen. His work, which has grown to encompass video, installation, sculpture and recently painting, has been exhibited in Spain, Dominican Republic, China, Panama, Brazil, London, the United States and Costa Rica. In 2014, Carranza was awarded residencies at Pioneer Works Center for Art and Innovation and Residency Unlimited in Brooklyn, New York. This is Carranza’s first solo gallery exhibition in New York City.
