As Cristina BanBan has emerged more into the spotlight, her works are getting more and more faded, as if time has taken over and she returning to a previous century. In the process, the works seem more confident and more historic, an echo of a memory or personal narrative that seems both distant and direct. That her show in Paris at Perrotin has no title seems quite bold and direct as well, letting her aggressive marks take centerstage and give the viewer their own story to read.
Last year when I spoke with BanBan, she told me of a new process, " I had the need to feel I wasn’t in control so that accidents could happen. That is so beautiful. And that’s how it is with oil paint; you never know how it will react." And that sort of practice and now routine is becoming for BanBan, as her more literal lines are now powerfully abstract. The figures are her but also fictional, so that distant of what memory can remember. You can see in the paintings a desire to recall, both as reality and fantasy, and in Paris, that sort of history is apt.—Evan Pricco
