Back in 2018 when we first sat down with Theresa Chromati, the artist told us "There are definitely elements that are directly from me. I haven’t figured out if I’m making self-portraits or not. Right now I’m saying no, but there are definitely elements, like scarification and keloids, the hair and the feet. There’s tons of elements, but I think they survive without me, so I don’t know if that still counts as a self-portrait." And in a way, Chromati's newest body of work, although the most abstract, feels like the most refined self-portraits we have seen from the artist. They are stunning and complex.
Jessica Silverman is pleased to announce Theresa Chromati: A Living Record (Her Arrival Was Once Steps Taken), the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery and in San Francisco, running from April 20 to May 27, 2023. On view will be the American debut of one of her inventive bronze scrotum flower sculptures, A Life to be Lived within this Deep Breath ( I am with You as We Take This Step forward ) (2023). The exhibition will also include a suite of new, ambitious paintings in the artist’s signature abstract figurative style. These paintings continue to extrapolate from the source of Chromati’s “central figure”, a conceptual feminine spirit that inhabits each of her paintings in differing compositions and arrangements.
Inscribed with various meditative phrases, Chromati’s bronze sculpture stands freely, transforming a flowering or phallic structure with black petals at the top, moving into a yellow stem and vibrant red at the base. A recurring motif throughout her body of work, her scrotum flower is a kinship network that symbolizes the union of energies and vibrations, balancing delicate, robust, masculine and feminine energies all at once. The artist conceives of these scrotum flowers populating her creative universe as guardians of care for the “central figure,” ushering her forward in her journey of self-discovery and contemplation that balance the tensions and forces that lie within.
New acrylic paintings such as Take another Breath ( come what may ) (2023) show innumerable layers of paint and glitter that celebrate unbridled freedom of movement, fluidity and multiplicity. The presence of the artist’s hand expands upon the beauty of gesture without limitation, with teal and golden strokes that emerge, swirl and coalesce harmoniously against a crimson backdrop. All that is Allowed ( Steps that Continue ) (also 2023) has a similar command of color, with intricate linework and differing hues building off of one another, strengthening the flux of the “central figure.” Each of these works are given an added material dimension with soft silk velvet sculptures that protrude from the canvases, where Chromati places her paintings in dialogue with the phallic element of the bronze sculpture. This is the artist’s first time using silk velvet in these elements.
Similar to the powerful feminine forms in the work of Juanita McNeely and Leonor Fini, Chromati’s work lauds experimentation and pure artistic feeling that, at once, unifies qualities that are complex, fruitful, assured and dynamic. As if to convey the residues of a fluid body, always in motion, Chromati’s work marks conversations between a woman and her past, future, and present, or put more simply by the artist: “A record that she moves.”