Karla Marchesi

Pleasure Garden

2022
oil on linen
180 x 150cm
Courtesy of the artist

Artist bio

Brisbane-born, Berlin-based artist Karla Marchesi employs the still life genre as a means through which to reflect upon socio-cultural anxieties of our age. Her paintings theatrically critique what it means to be human at this present moment under conditions of late capitalism and anthropocentrism, interweaving an allegoric deconstruction of ideological systems with autobiography, pathos and humour.

Artist statement

'Pleasure Garden (2022) reflects upon a dissonance between hedonic desire and modalities of pleasure in contemporary social life. Within a playground of Rococo excess, arrangements of succulents and flora brim with innuendo. Situated atop pastoral landscapes, this work stages anthropomorphised cacti and flora as vessels for psycho-sexual projection. This great asinine mass of succulents stages a contemporary Fête galante painting,  with anthropomorphic bontany standing in place for young, hedonistic nobility in a spirited Baroque-punk upending of Romanticism.'

@karlamarchesi

This artwork will be on display in the 2023 Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize Finalist Exhibition from Saturday 25 November 2023 until Sunday 18 February 2024.

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