SAATCHI GALLERY
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SELECTED WORKS BY Angelina Gualdoni



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Angelina Gualdoni

Midway

2005
Acrylic and oil on canvas

122 x 152.5

The mangled supports of a delapidated structure are silhouetted against a chemical sky like wild brambles. Midway belongs to a series of recent works depicting a world in constant change, prey to mankind's malevolent inattentiveness. Abandoned buildings are eaten up by the ground on which they once proudly stood, subservient partners in a dialogue between the natural and man-made over which they have relinquished control. The role of chance is apparent in both the painting's subject matter and technique. Drips, spills and stains create a force of abstraction that threatens to engulf what remains of the representational imagery.


Angelina Gualdoni

Nocturne


122 x 152.5

Nocturne portrays an abandoned shopping mall in the American midwest, found through the internet like those in Midway and The Slow Continuum, and visited by the artist in person. Unprofitable or subject to protracted legal dispute, they have been marginalised by society and neglected by all but the occasional pack of wild dogs or thrill-seeking adolescents. They are here presented as territories in limbo, modern ruins vulnerable to nature's entropic processes of recovery and repossession. Beneath a dark, threatening sky, trees and weeds surround and fill the buildings exerting strain on their physical structure, while a slick of poured paint seeps like bloody entrails into the foreground.


Angelina Gualdoni

Praca dos Tres Poderes (Morning)

2005
Acrylic and oil on canvas

122 x 183

Praca dos Tres Poderes is a large, imposing square at the heart of Brasilia, the political capital of Brazil. Constructed between 1956 and 1960 to a design by visionary architect Oscar Niemeyer, and heralded as a landmark in contemporary urban planning, the city has come to be seen as a terrible utopian failure. Functionless, soul-numbing, and inhospitable to human trafffic, it today stands as a dated, retro icon, and a symbol of the death of Modernism itself. Gualdoni perfectly captures this emptiness, portraying a vast expanse of barren sky above the deserted pedestrian plaza, empty but for the discarded trolley of a popcorn vendor. The present, it is all too clear, is elsewhere, and the future is one of hushed uncertainty.


Angelina Gualdoni

The Slow Continuum That Proceeds in Your Absence

2005
acrylic and oil on canvas

152 x 183

Working from her own photographic documentation, Gualdoni depicts suburban architecture in a state of melancholy abandonment. Reclaimed by nature, the structures assume a life of their own as remnants of failure and unfulfilled expectation. In The Slow Continuum, weeds and young trees in the open concrete atrium of an elevated building are bathed in light from a momentary cloudbreak, evoking feelings of nostalgia and otherworldliness and hinting, perhaps, at the possibility of a more positive future to come. A similar sense of restrained but palpable emotion saturates those other works by the artist presented here.



ARTIST INFORMATION




OTHER RESOURCES



artfacts.net
Additional Information on Angelina Gualdoni

the-artists.org
Modern and contemporary artists and art; Angelina Gualdoni
An extensive selection of Angelina Gualdoni articles and reviews

findarticles.com - Angelina Gualdoni at Vedanta - ChicagoBy Susan Snodgrass
Angelina Gualdoni's richly nuanced paintings, six of which made up her impressive solo debut "Demo," explore notions of progress and decline by presenting images of utopian architecture in a state of ruin.

voltashow.com
Angelina Gualdoni's second solo exhibition at Kavi Gupta Gallery in December 2004 described an ominous shifting world that is constantly changing yet never indicating its motives as a benevolent or malevolent force.

glasstire.com
Chicago artist Angelina Gualdoni presents FringeCity, six paintings that depict a somewhat desolate landscape. While she investigates various states of ruin, Gualdoni also presents an optimistic viewpoint. Her isolated representations of city, suburban, and country structures are not just records of a declining society, they are imbued with a hopeful outlook for renewed generative life.

depaviljoens.nl - Angelina Gualdoni: Museum De Paviljoens
Enkele schilderijen van Angelina Gualdoni roepen door de pastelkleuren associaties op met de gestileerde beelden uit Disney animaties. Een aantal andere werken is geschilderd in gedempte tonen en roept in eerste instantie een meer geheimzinnige sfeer op.
 
 

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