Far from the Tree, 2019
115×174 cm
Gel medium, ink on PVC

Far from the Tree, 2019
115×174 cm
Gel medium, ink on PVC

Far from the Tree, 2019
115×174 cm
Gel medium, ink on PVC

Introduction
Installation view

Introduction
Installation view

McNamara Projects and Antenna Space are pleased to present Force of Circumstance, an exhibition of new work by Swiss artist, Louisa Gagliardi, on view from January 22 – February 25, 2019. Curated by DM Office, the show marks the artist’s solo debut in Asia.

Drawing freely from disparate painterly traditions as well as contemporary graphic design and advertising, Gagliardi’s practice questions oppositions between figure and ground, flatness and depth, the digital and the hand. Each work begins as a simple sketch, usually drawn swiftly while in transit, that then is elaborated through various image editing software. The results are luminous dreamscapes populated by vaguely genderless, humanoid avatars that seem to coyly resist congealing into solid form. Infinitely mutable, these scenes are fixed only when printed onto industrial vinyl and intervened upon with a gel medium whose lush texture evokes both ghostly brush marks and the sheen of a screen. In this way, the work situates itself firmly as an in-between space where the surface unfolds as a complex field of visual play, a permeable membrane between the enigmatic and the banal.

The works in Force of Circumstance advance this conversation by tackling the imagined tensions between city and countryside. Pastoral scenes are conjured alongside depictions of urban bustle, but upon closer inspection the respective markers of each milieu bleed and contaminate one another. The resulting indeterminacy – hinted at by luminous, gaseous voids - sheds light on our own hybrid landscape, the anxious demands of modern living and the irresistible yet dangerous allure of nostalgia. Memory and longing emerge as the most tangible modalities, articulated vividly by images printed onto shaped PVC. Mimicking keyholes, these pieces traffic in obscured views of a sprawling plenitude that remains just beyond reach.

Louisa Gagliardi (b. 1989) currently lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland. Recent institutional exhibitions include No Fear of Fainting in a Gym, Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen, Sankt-Gallen, CH; Being There, Louisiana Museum, Humlebaek, Denmark and La Vitesse des Images, Instituto Svizzero, Roma, IT. Her first institutional solo in the UK, Under The Weather, is currently on view at the art center MOSTYN in Llandudno, Wales. 

McNamara Projects and Antenna Space are pleased to present Force of Circumstance, an exhibition of new work by Swiss artist, Louisa Gagliardi, on view from January 22 – February 25, 2019. Curated by DM Office, the show marks the artist’s solo debut in Asia.

Drawing freely from disparate painterly traditions as well as contemporary graphic design and advertising, Gagliardi’s practice questions oppositions between figure and ground, flatness and depth, the digital and the hand. Each work begins as a simple sketch, usually drawn swiftly while in transit, that then is elaborated through various image editing software. The results are luminous dreamscapes populated by vaguely genderless, humanoid avatars that seem to coyly resist congealing into solid form. Infinitely mutable, these scenes are fixed only when printed onto industrial vinyl and intervened upon with a gel medium whose lush texture evokes both ghostly brush marks and the sheen of a screen. In this way, the work situates itself firmly as an in-between space where the surface unfolds as a complex field of visual play, a permeable membrane between the enigmatic and the banal.

The works in Force of Circumstance advance this conversation by tackling the imagined tensions between city and countryside. Pastoral scenes are conjured alongside depictions of urban bustle, but upon closer inspection the respective markers of each milieu bleed and contaminate one another. The resulting indeterminacy – hinted at by luminous, gaseous voids - sheds light on our own hybrid landscape, the anxious demands of modern living and the irresistible yet dangerous allure of nostalgia. Memory and longing emerge as the most tangible modalities, articulated vividly by images printed onto shaped PVC. Mimicking keyholes, these pieces traffic in obscured views of a sprawling plenitude that remains just beyond reach.

Louisa Gagliardi (b. 1989) currently lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland. Recent institutional exhibitions include No Fear of Fainting in a Gym, Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen, Sankt-Gallen, CH; Being There, Louisiana Museum, Humlebaek, Denmark and La Vitesse des Images, Instituto Svizzero, Roma, IT. Her first institutional solo in the UK, Under The Weather, is currently on view at the art center MOSTYN in Llandudno, Wales.

McNamara Projects and Antenna Space are pleased to present Force of Circumstance, an exhibition of new work by Swiss artist, Louisa Gagliardi, on view from January 22 – February 25, 2019. Curated by DM Office, the show marks the artist’s solo debut in Asia.

Drawing freely from disparate painterly traditions as well as contemporary graphic design and advertising, Gagliardi’s practice questions oppositions between figure and ground, flatness and depth, the digital and the hand. Each work begins as a simple sketch, usually drawn swiftly while in transit, that then is elaborated through various image editing software. The results are luminous dreamscapes populated by vaguely genderless, humanoid avatars that seem to coyly resist congealing into solid form. Infinitely mutable, these scenes are fixed only when printed onto industrial vinyl and intervened upon with a gel medium whose lush texture evokes both ghostly brush marks and the sheen of a screen. In this way, the work situates itself firmly as an in-between space where the surface unfolds as a complex field of visual play, a permeable membrane between the enigmatic and the banal.

The works in Force of Circumstance advance this conversation by tackling the imagined tensions between city and countryside. Pastoral scenes are conjured alongside depictions of urban bustle, but upon closer inspection the respective markers of each milieu bleed and contaminate one another. The resulting indeterminacy – hinted at by luminous, gaseous voids - sheds light on our own hybrid landscape, the anxious demands of modern living and the irresistible yet dangerous allure of nostalgia. Memory and longing emerge as the most tangible modalities, articulated vividly by images printed onto shaped PVC. Mimicking keyholes, these pieces traffic in obscured views of a sprawling plenitude that remains just beyond reach.

Louisa Gagliardi (b. 1989) currently lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland. Recent institutional exhibitions include No Fear of Fainting in a Gym, Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen, Sankt-Gallen, CH; Being There, Louisiana Museum, Humlebaek, Denmark and La Vitesse des Images, Instituto Svizzero, Roma, IT. Her first institutional solo in the UK, Under The Weather, is currently on view at the art center MOSTYN in Llandudno, Wales.

McNamara Projects and Antenna Space are pleased to present Force of Circumstance, an exhibition of new work by Swiss artist, Louisa Gagliardi, on view from January 22 – February 25, 2019. Curated by DM Office, the show marks the artist’s solo debut in Asia.

Drawing freely from disparate painterly traditions as well as contemporary graphic design and advertising, Gagliardi’s practice questions oppositions between figure and ground, flatness and depth, the digital and the hand. Each work begins as a simple sketch, usually drawn swiftly while in transit, that then is elaborated through various image editing software. The results are luminous dreamscapes populated by vaguely genderless, humanoid avatars that seem to coyly resist congealing into solid form. Infinitely mutable, these scenes are fixed only when printed onto industrial vinyl and intervened upon with a gel medium whose lush texture evokes both ghostly brush marks and the sheen of a screen. In this way, the work situates itself firmly as an in-between space where the surface unfolds as a complex field of visual play, a permeable membrane between the enigmatic and the banal.

The works in Force of Circumstance advance this conversation by tackling the imagined tensions between city and countryside. Pastoral scenes are conjured alongside depictions of urban bustle, but upon closer inspection the respective markers of each milieu bleed and contaminate one another. The resulting indeterminacy – hinted at by luminous, gaseous voids - sheds light on our own hybrid landscape, the anxious demands of modern living and the irresistible yet dangerous allure of nostalgia. Memory and longing emerge as the most tangible modalities, articulated vividly by images printed onto shaped PVC. Mimicking keyholes, these pieces traffic in obscured views of a sprawling plenitude that remains just beyond reach.

Louisa Gagliardi (b. 1989) currently lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland. Recent institutional exhibitions include No Fear of Fainting in a Gym, Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen, Sankt-Gallen, CH; Being There, Louisiana Museum, Humlebaek, Denmark and La Vitesse des Images, Instituto Svizzero, Roma, IT. Her first institutional solo in the UK, Under The Weather, is currently on view at the art center MOSTYN in Llandudno, Wales.

McNamara Projects and Antenna Space are pleased to present Force of Circumstance, an exhibition of new work by Swiss artist, Louisa Gagliardi, on view from January 22 – February 25, 2019. Curated by DM Office, the show marks the artist’s solo debut in Asia.

Drawing freely from disparate painterly traditions as well as contemporary graphic design and advertising, Gagliardi’s practice questions oppositions between figure and ground, flatness and depth, the digital and the hand. Each work begins as a simple sketch, usually drawn swiftly while in transit, that then is elaborated through various image editing software. The results are luminous dreamscapes populated by vaguely genderless, humanoid avatars that seem to coyly resist congealing into solid form. Infinitely mutable, these scenes are fixed only when printed onto industrial vinyl and intervened upon with a gel medium whose lush texture evokes both ghostly brush marks and the sheen of a screen. In this way, the work situates itself firmly as an in-between space where the surface unfolds as a complex field of visual play, a permeable membrane between the enigmatic and the banal.

The works in Force of Circumstance advance this conversation by tackling the imagined tensions between city and countryside. Pastoral scenes are conjured alongside depictions of urban bustle, but upon closer inspection the respective markers of each milieu bleed and contaminate one another. The resulting indeterminacy – hinted at by luminous, gaseous voids - sheds light on our own hybrid landscape, the anxious demands of modern living and the irresistible yet dangerous allure of nostalgia. Memory and longing emerge as the most tangible modalities, articulated vividly by images printed onto shaped PVC. Mimicking keyholes, these pieces traffic in obscured views of a sprawling plenitude that remains just beyond reach.

Louisa Gagliardi (b. 1989) currently lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland. Recent institutional exhibitions include No Fear of Fainting in a Gym, Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen, Sankt-Gallen, CH; Being There, Louisiana Museum, Humlebaek, Denmark and La Vitesse des Images, Instituto Svizzero, Roma, IT. Her first institutional solo in the UK, Under The Weather, is currently on view at the art center MOSTYN in Llandudno, Wales.