Laura Larraz

Chris Sharp Gallery is pleased to present its second solo exhibition of Berlin-based, Spanish artist, Laura Larraz, entitled Kleines Arschloch.

The exhibition consists of two interrelated bodies of work: fighting cats and sobbing angels. Painted on large, white canvases, the cats, which are at times hard to distinguish from the outrageous welter of marks with which they have been painted, fight in pairs or groups. The angels, which are directly inspired by Giotto’s lamentation in the Scrovegni chapel, are depicted on smaller canvases, like pendants, and have been painted with a similar violence. To describe the conjunction of these two elements as a political allegory of our moment seems almost too good to be true. Or maybe it’s the cathartic aspect of this work that is too good to be true. Either way these paintings, channeling everything from Goya to Almodóvar, work. They do the work— the explosive pictorial histrionics of rage and ululation (which yields to laughter), which seem to be the only appropriate responses to our situation. But to leave it at that is more than a little reductive. Larraz’s work touches upon so much more, from questions of taste to the western canon to camp as a critical strategy to “action painting.” Timely as they are timeless, these pictures move— in every which way.