exist This time before tomorrowCalida Rawles disagrees with familiar faces (her daughter and chosen companion) that describe her recent work. Instead, the artist returns to rippling abstract and bubbling textures and masks recognizable features with painted gestures.
For Rawles, water is never neutral. In the blood of scholars such as Christina Sharpe and Saidiya Hartman, the artist believes that water is the place to charge and the ship of memory. As Audre Lorde, Octavia Butler and Albert Camus mention, she proposes this philosophical basis as a way to consider the necessity of change and how transformation can inspire hope. “What is the role of an artist in a time of crisis?” she asked.
Rawles mixes her surreal style with surreal twists, always starting with a photo session and then turning to the canvas. At this stage, she remembers moments of ambiguity. The flashing ups and downs and bubbles mask the character’s body, while the reflective surface creates a double hallucination, both forms bleeding from each other. Whether it is barely violating the surface of the water or falling into the pool, these characters seem to hang up for a brief moment, their liquid surroundings embracing relaxed limbs.
Rawles attracted Chiaroscuro in these paintings, forming deep, cloudy water with bold acrylic. This dark palette is also a metaphor for the current moment. She said:
Personally, I am struggling to deal with fractures in American mythology – a commitment to democracy, inclusion and justice. Today, this dream is becoming increasingly elusive. The furnace that once symbolized unity is now shattered under the weight of deportation. Truth becomes subjective; justice feels subverted. In this kind of cultural disorientation, I find myself unbounded – knowing structural transformations on my personal and collective basis.
This time before tomorrow It was until September 27th on display at Lehmann Maupin London.
