Liste 2024

Chris Sharp Gallery is pleased to present a solo presentation of new paintings by the Spanish, Berlin-based artist Laura Larraz.

This series consists exclusively of depictions of owls, which are hung in a deliberately casual manner, defying notions of good taste. Emerging from an almost abstract welter of lyrical mark making on otherwise entirely white canvases, a parliament of owls defiantly stare back out at the viewer in intense consternation, as if not only reciprocating, but also preempting any attempt at comprehension. Almost, but not quite metaphors of looking— especially since owls are often heard rather than seen— owls here assume an ambiguous symbolic charge. Are they substitutes for nature? A nature that stares back at us? Or nature as something we seek to dominate through depiction? Or nature as this thing which is separated from us by an unbridgeable gulf no matter how hard we try to dominate it? Or finally, are they ironic commentaries on the wisdom, nay moral guidance we foolishly expect from contemporary painting? Whatever the case may be, the paintings drily offer a multitude of interpretations, while foregrounding the very nature of painting as something which apparently observes us as much as we observe it.