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Lot Essay
We are grateful to Sonia Becce for her assistance cataloguing this work.
In the early to mid-1980s, Kuitca began to make paintings that dealt with theaters as a subject, relating to his interest in architecture, dance, film and cartography. It is a subject that has continued to appear in both paintings and works on paper throughout his career. The artist is interested in the architecture of specific, well-known theaters from around the world and often returns to one theater repeatedly, as in the case of Covent Garden. Spare, modernist theaters are as prevalent as Baroque. In addition to colossal spaces, always seen from the stage, the artist alludes to movement within them, often creating a sense of destabilization. He continued to return to this compelling theme, painting large-scale works of the interior of theaters throughout the 1990s. The artist made a series of large-scale “theater collages” in 2003-2004 based on seating charts of some of the most well-known opera houses and theaters around the world, such as the Paris Opera. In the collages, these majestic buildings appear in the midst of a chaotic destruction that takes the form of an earthquake, explosion or dematerialization.
The connection between architecture, humanity and systems of contemporary life are alluded to in these works, in which the overpowering forms of the theater’s architecture dwarf the viewer at the same time as they acknowledge the human hand. The sense of the cavernous emptiness of space is ever present. The potential presence of humanity is only underscored by the empty seats and the structure itself. Psychologically, the works present a riveting perspective, taken specifically from the point of view of the invisible figure-actor occupying the stage. As viewers, we are dwarfed by the dramatic scale of the space in front of us and a kind of “stage fright” takes over. In works such as this present example, Kuitca plays with the contrasts of presence and absence, public and actor, the line between being and performing, acting and receiving, real space and the imagined.
Rocío Aranda-Alvarado, Curator, El Museo del Barrio, New York
In the early to mid-1980s, Kuitca began to make paintings that dealt with theaters as a subject, relating to his interest in architecture, dance, film and cartography. It is a subject that has continued to appear in both paintings and works on paper throughout his career. The artist is interested in the architecture of specific, well-known theaters from around the world and often returns to one theater repeatedly, as in the case of Covent Garden. Spare, modernist theaters are as prevalent as Baroque. In addition to colossal spaces, always seen from the stage, the artist alludes to movement within them, often creating a sense of destabilization. He continued to return to this compelling theme, painting large-scale works of the interior of theaters throughout the 1990s. The artist made a series of large-scale “theater collages” in 2003-2004 based on seating charts of some of the most well-known opera houses and theaters around the world, such as the Paris Opera. In the collages, these majestic buildings appear in the midst of a chaotic destruction that takes the form of an earthquake, explosion or dematerialization.
The connection between architecture, humanity and systems of contemporary life are alluded to in these works, in which the overpowering forms of the theater’s architecture dwarf the viewer at the same time as they acknowledge the human hand. The sense of the cavernous emptiness of space is ever present. The potential presence of humanity is only underscored by the empty seats and the structure itself. Psychologically, the works present a riveting perspective, taken specifically from the point of view of the invisible figure-actor occupying the stage. As viewers, we are dwarfed by the dramatic scale of the space in front of us and a kind of “stage fright” takes over. In works such as this present example, Kuitca plays with the contrasts of presence and absence, public and actor, the line between being and performing, acting and receiving, real space and the imagined.
Rocío Aranda-Alvarado, Curator, El Museo del Barrio, New York