ELOISA BALLIVIAN

Eloisa Ballivian, Working on “Damage”, Buenos Aires Studio.

Horror Vacui

The day that Eloisa summoned me to write the text of his new exhibition, I found out that a close relative had a tumor in his brain. With a very cliché defense mechanism, I knew how to cover myself with work and everyday tasks so as not to focus on what was bothering me. I devoted hours to meaningless activities, or rather, absolute sense in a context of hyperposting and verbiage of stories And although I did not stop going to exhibitions and visiting museums, I got used to dwelling on beauty and fun. Then Eloisa appeared, like an inevitable animal on the road, like that woman who always scares me when the elevator doors of my building open and I am distracted. For those coincidences of life, I started my 2018 at her home, but with her I spoke for the first time seven months later. I remember entering his property and feeling that the disposition of the place was planned to breathe.

There was a harmonious balance between the protagonism of the objects and the people who circulated. As every year, I spent hours decorating the end of the year table. In search of ornaments, I went through the spaces with great attention. I studied the place of furniture, that huge Asplenium Nidus placed in the center of the living room. Her stones, books and mirrors. The magnificent velvety armchair located under the pergola of light. That thousand-leaf window that anticipated a garden of figs The pool and its colors. And the extension of the house with adjoining land whose trees, trunks and hammocks hid the great treasure of the place the workshop of the artist.

Eloisa's workspace had a very exceptional aura, Its glass box format made everything that happened around strikes directly in his works the clouds, the full moon, the song of the birds. I remember seeing the moon through the glass walls and then its acrylics illuminated by the twelve o'clock fireworks. Having met that space without Eloisa explaining her work, generated in me a genuine perception her wark would have appeared on my journey in the same way that the artist did months later when summoning me to write this text. Again, I wandered until i faced the great apparition. On the 31st at night, while I was carrying out my expedition, a large canvas of the face of a beautiful woman caught my attention. The protagonist carried a postmodern beauty almost out of a catwalk Chanel bushy eyebrows, prominent lips. I envisioned her leading a healthy life, connected with repairing environmental damage. However, something happened. His worried eyes diverted my gaze to another side of the painting. I no longer enjoyed the beauty of the protagonist. Now I was worried about his parted fips. What are you looking at? I discovered that his nose was missing. I got anxious What do you do? I had been looking at the work for half an hour but my attention was no longer on the painted but on what surrounded it. Then, as to whom a revealed truth falls, I understood that what had throbbing me was not the presence of what was there but the absence of what was missing.

The works presented by Eloisa in the exhibition Horror Vacui exhibit recognizable scenarios in the advertising wanna-be pools with lustful models, elegant costumes with eternal hairs, collection cars in some location of LA and a familiar scene of a father and a son under the heat of spring. They could be photos found in albums, travel memories or happy memories of moments lived. However, the focus is on empty spaces, Implanted with ffffsuspicion by the artist. It is not incompleteness but a speculated void. The intension of the target is there and the images coexist with those voids. But now, the meaning of the work another and that which is not required to reinterpret its content. The characters are the same always but this time they are mare human they have absences and, like outside of art, that disturbs. But what does it mean to be disturbed?

I think that being disturbed has to do with the alteration of the order of everyday life and then I imagine its repercussion in three stages one emotional, one analytical and one spiritual. The emotional impact appears when an absence is perceived what existed before now Is no longer there and does not belong to me anymore. It is a harrowing stage but, after all, it defines me as human. Then there, when I already identified the emptiness, I can pass an analytical stage. Now I accept the absence but this time understanding that my identity is built from that which is not I am what I am without that and that absence will accompany me forever. Finally, the last stage has to do with the evolution of that void, with what I will do with it: I already distinguished the absence and I affirmed myself to leave and with it, but now with wisdom and self-knowledge i transform it into learning. Ino longer fight against emptiness because I see it as an essential part of an organic whole.

So, being disturbed is it positive? I think about the artists and the ability they have to disturb through their works. However, to disturb they have to go through their fears every time they come across a sheet, canvas or empty wood. And still, it is possible that they face fear and do not achieve consequences in those who appreciate their works The number of times a work left me thinking for weeks is innumerable, but without doubting there are many more that were insignificant to me. So artists have a double challenge. With this exhibition Eloisa has net only managed to overcome her fear of emptiness, but also that she has invited me to stop my walking machine and has called me to a very deep reflection. The appearance of Eloisa, like that of the tumor manifested my own fear of emptiness. But now I understand that there is no way to escape him. Maybe its time to stop wanting everything, to understand, as Eloisa did, that everything resides in the nothing.

Ailin Staicos
11/06/2018

EXHIBICIONES / EXHIBITIONS

2024 / "NO ME CONTAINER" / SOLO SHOW / UNO+UNO GALLERY, BUENOS AIRES.
2022 / "THE HERO SHE NEEDED" / ARUSHI GALLERY, LOS ANGELES.
2019 / FAB GALLERY LAST SHOW / GROUP SHOW, LOS ANGELES.
2019 / "THE OTHER ART FAIR" / BARKER HANGAR, LOS ANGELES
2018 / "HORROR VACUI /SOLO EXHIBITION" / MIRANDA BOSCH GALLERY
2017 / "ARTE BA 26 FERIA DE ARTE CONTEMPORANEO" / MIRANDA BOSCH GALLERY.
2016 / "INTERNATIONAL ART FAIR", BARCELONA
2015 / "MODO AVION" / HOLZ GALLERY/BUENOS AIRES SOLO EXHIBITION.
2013 / "ARTE BA 22 FERIA DE ARTE CONTEMPORANEO" / GALERIA HOLZ/BUENOS AIRES
2012 / "ARTE ESPACIO" / MUNICIPALIDAD DE SAN ISIDRO / PREMIO ADQUISICION
2010 / "HARD TIMES ARE OVER"/ HOLZ GALERIE / BUENOS AIRES. SOLO EXHIBITION
2009 / "MI ESPIRITU SE FUE ELSI DEE RIO" / BUENOS AIRES. SOLO EXHIBITION
2006 / LE PETIT MORTE GALLERY /ONTARIO / CANADA.
2005 / "THE END OF SOMETHING" / MIAU MIAU ESTUDIO / BUENOS AIRES. SOLO EXHIBITION
2005 / BRAGA MENENDEZ / FESTIVAL DE LA LUZ / BUENOS AIRES.
2005 / ARTE BA 14 FERIA DE ARTE CONTEMPORANEO / BRAGA MENENDEZ.
2005 / BUENOS AIRES, MANTENGASE ALEADO DE LAS PUERTAS QUE SE CIERRAN / BRAGA MENENDEZ ARTE SOLO EXHIBITION
2003 / "DELUXE", COMUNIDAD DE MADRID/ MADRID.
2002 / "NOVA 1.1" / PUERTO MADERO / BUENOS AIRES.
2002 / "HOLIDAY COMUNIDAD DE MADRID" / MADRID.
2001 /"CASATE CONMIGO JOVEN" / WASSER / BUENOS AIRES, SOLO EXHIBITION.
2000 / "CURADURIAM", FUNDACION PROA / BUENOS AIRES.
2000 / "HOLIDAY", ESPACIO BUENOS AIRES/ B.A.

"PEOPLES, CARS, HOUSES, PLANTS, NOTHING, EVERYTHING".

The Other Art Fair, Los Angeles, September, 2019.

Eloisa Ballivian paintings think about pop culture as a force of nature. In large scale, her paintings take over the viewer like an awesome wave -a flood of color and voice that takes command over the gaze. Her paintings look at us from a dream-like world, where thoughts are present as emotions trapped in time. Eloisa's works typically begin as photographs, who later take on a new life as oil paintings in them, objects travel into a new life where they become sentient beings. Her cars and plants exude emotion, and her vision is a roadmovie she invites us to travel to a mind-based California, both a sensual desert of tentacular aloes and the utopia that looms in our wettest techie dreams. "We wanted flying cars, and we got 140 characters", wrote tech guru Peter Thiel, who pointed out the deceleration of technological prowess. We thought the future was going to bring magical things, and yet we're trapped like automats handled by the master that lives in our own phones. In Eloisa's vision, humans and technology behave like flora.

Her works bring out the sentient being of complex systems suspended on air, without tires and headlights, her cars evoke a blind mole trapped in our Zeitgeist, the mechanical workshop of Homo Sapiens fantasies. It is, after all, the human that it's put into question, not the machine, who blooms like nature formations and adapts to the Sapiens ecosystem.

The first time I saw Eloisa's paintings, I felt humbled by her visions of Rio de Janeiro at night, where plants and trash interwove with the nocturne breeze. Few artists like Elosa enact such a strong connection to Latin American territory as a dreamed landscape made of escapism, where drama hides in turmoil under the glow ing, seemingly calm surface. Eloisa Ballivian is one of greatest contemporary painters of the new generation in Latin America.

Pola Oloixarac
2019

About Eloisa Ballivian

Eloísa Ballivian paintings think about pop culture as a force of nature. In large scale, her paintings take over the viewer like a wave centered in the gaze. Her paintings look at us from a dream-like world, where thoughts are present as emotions trapped in time. Eloisa's artwork begins as photographs whose take on a new life as paintings, where objects travel to their new life where they become sentient beings. Her cars and plants exude emotion, making us travel to the California as a sensual desert of flying cars that looms in our wet techie dreams. Born in Argentina, Eloisa grew up between Madrid and Buenos Aires, and she recently relocated in Los Angeles.

WORKS
1994 / 1999 WORKS AS GRAPHIC DESIGNER FOR UNIVERSAL RECORDS, POLYGRAM , SONY.
2000 / 2002 MAKES COLLABORATIONS AS A PHOTOGRAPHER FOR ROLLING STONE, ELLE, NEO 2.
2002 / 2009 WORKS AS ART DDIRECTOR FOR REBOLUCION FILMS, ORUGA CINE, DOBLE A.
2002 / 2007 INTEGRATES THE SELECTED ARTISTS OF BRAGA MENENDEZ ARTE CONTEMPORANEO.
2010 / 2012 INTEGRATES THE SELECTED ARTISTS OF ELSI DEL RIO GALLERY.
2012 / 2013 INTEGRATES THE SELECTED ARTISTS OF HOLZ GALLERY.
2017 / 2018 INTEGRATES THE SELECTED ARTISTS OF MIRANDA BOSCH GALLERY.


Eloisa Ballivián in front of "Trópico de Cancer" Mural, Buenos Aires, 2019.
Wallpaper Collection Design by Wallpapers Ba, 2017.


"Dark Garden" Site specific Commission, Acrylic on Wall, 10 x 4 mts, Arroyo Tower hotel, Buenos Aires, 2016.

Painting at Buenos Aires studio, 2015.

Limpiando una Obra en Instalación, Oruga Cine, Buenos Aires, 2018.