Letters from Paradise (2018)

“Letters from Paradise” is Yaima Carrazana’s last solo exhibition in Amsterdam. The paintings streamline the particular psychology and ideology of institutional color palettes. The works explore large format canvasses using oil paint. Gradients, transparencies and color interferences predominate, as well as harmonious combinations. Creating illusory spaces, perhaps bureaucracy-free and imagining a heaven for optimism. For the artist “Letters from Paradise” summarizes several years trying to figure out “the good life” in a foreign country. Carrazana allow herself the freedom to use governmental Dutch color codes from her own perspective as a foreigner. The work’s provocation lies in its seeming open-endlessness, its refusal to assert a closure of meaning and the possibility to expand a private experience into a public one.

The presented paintings appropriate and re-articulate the meticulous design of the Dutch government, reaching out to the government-wide corporate identity. These works are a culmination of Yaima’s previous works; from “Declaration letters” taken from designs of the Ministry of Justice, Tax and Customs Administration (Belastingdienst), and documents regarding her immigration status in the Netherlands, to “Foreign Affairs”, inspired by a wide range of bureaucratic sources. For “Foreign Affairs”, Carrazana appropriates the color palette used by this Ministry for its graphic communication.

Location: NEVERNEVERLAND at de Punt
Frans de Wollantstraat 84, 1018 SC Amsterdam

Letters from Paradise - Exhibition opening

Letters from Paradise - Exhibition opening

Letters from Paradise - Exhibition opening

Letters from Paradise - Exhibition opening

Letters from Paradise - Exhibition opening

Exhibition view 2

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