Artist:
Juan Araújo (born 1971 in Caracas, Venezuela; lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal).

Materials:
Oil on wood.

Description:
“Residencia Milan 1 is a painting of a house surrounded by lush forest. The image depicted is both photorealistic and creates the illusion of an unfolded piece of paper, with creases and discolorations. In referring to the circulation of images, the painting raises questions of a viewer’s relationship to the image of a beautiful house: as icon, wish, or standard of beauty.”
—”Juan Araujo, Residencia Milan 1,” Kadist Foundation website.

“A ilusão da transparência [The Illusion of Transparence], alludes to the title of a chapter in a book by Joseph Albers that refers to the creation of an effect by which the physical experience is transformed into the visualization of an illusory space. This title allows for an association with Juan Araujo’s architectural speculations, with the impression produced by light and translucent structures, which Marcos Acayaba has developed since 1972, and which are present in the paintings presented in the exhibition, depicting the residences of Helio Olga, Baeta and Milan.”
—”Juan Araujo, La Ilusión de La Transparencia,” Galeria Luisa Strina website.

“Araújo’s paintings read as cut-out reproductions of texts and images from architecture magazines and art history books. Inside these collages of sorts there’s enough space for Le Corbusier, Luis Barragán or Lina Bo Bardi to collapse onto each other.

“The precise yet carefree quality of the paintings, allied to the humbleness of the materials (mostly small format pieces of paper, mounted on wood or hung by threads) manage to evade their photographic origin, pointing rather to the circulation as image of their source and their fragility. Marked by a somewhat expected, and therefore hackneyed conjunction of modernism and the tropics, such qualities offer an acute seductiveness to Araújo’s work.”
—Pedro Neves Marques, “Juan Araujo’s ‘La silla del diablo,” Kaleidoscope Blog, January 8, 2011.