Macarena Rojas Osterling: The Spaces Between

15 - 27 March 2022
Overview

Black Box Projects is pleased to present The Spaces Between, an exhibition by Peruvian visual artist, Macarena Rojas Osterling.  In her first solo exhibition both with Black Box Projects and in the United Kingdom, Rojas Osterling will present a series composed of paintings, drawings, mixed media works on paper and photographs that explore the interconnectedness and duality of her experience as both artist and mother.

 

In a similar vein to the automatic drawings of the surrealists, Rojas Osterling's practice embodies streams of consciousness on paper, with her drawings acting as a space in which the artist allows herself to lose control and temporarily free herself from the demands of domestic life. This intuitive way of working is paired almost paradoxically with a sense of careful observation and seemingly mathematical technicality. This controlled chaos parallels Rojas Osterling's experience of balancing the demands of motherhood and the mundane chaos that brings, with the challenge of maintaining an artistic practice.

 

The intricate interlacing of the webs, networks and grids that make up Rojas Osterling's drawings come together to form compositions that straddle the border between disorder and control. Using architectural precision in conjunction with fluid free drawing, the works have an organic quality to them, as well as a rawness that echoes a mind in a chronic state of interruption, the mind of a mother. The very materials themselves become a receptacle of emotions, an antidote to anxiety, a space of thought, a place to scream, a private space and a daily ritual.

 

Rojas Osterling is formally trained in architecture, with photography being her entry-point into a fine art practice.  These architectural elements as well as the photographic works throughout the exhibition, serve as concrete and tangible points of grounding within a series of works based upon ideas of chaos, interruption and the impermanent. The artist weaves an intimate story that is deeply personal to her own experiences as artist, woman, and mother - but also speaks to a universal human condition of existing within modern society.

 

Macarena Rojas Osterling was born in 1985 in Lima, Peru. She studied Architecture at the Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas and subsequently transferred to the Communications Department, where she graduated in 2009. In 2012 she did the General Studies in Photography Program at the International Center of Photography in New York and in 2017 she received her Masters in Fine Arts at The Royal College of Art in London.

 

Her work has been exhibited in Crisis Galería Lima (2019), Art Lima (2018), Museo AMANO Lima (2018), Camden Arts Center London (2017), Edinburgh College of Art (2016), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Lima (2016), ArtBo Bogotá (2016), Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago de Chile (2014), Wu Galería (2014-2015), International Center of Photography New York (2012), Triskelion Arts New York (2013), amongst other public and privately held exhibitions.

 

The Spaces Between will include over 20 unique and editioned works, all pieces are available for sale with prices ranging from £ 500 - £ 6,000 + VAT.

 

Black Box Projects

4 Cromwell Place, Gallery 10

London

SW7 2JE

 

Opening times:            

Wednesday - Saturday, 10 am - 6 pm

Sunday, 11 am - 4 pm

And by appointment

 

Please contact Kathlene Fox-Davies on kathlene@blackboxprojects.art for further details, images, press materials and for interview access to artist.

 

Works