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“Rainbow drops – suck them and you can spit in six different colours.” Roald Dahl
The Dot Project is pleased to present Candy, a dual show featuring new works by London-based artists Cristina BanBan (b. 1987) and Dominic Dispirito (b. 1982).
Candy grapples with how to navigate a world saturated by consumerism, digital imagery, humour and the struggle of everyday life. Recalling the use of bold colours and commonplace objects found in Pop Art, BanBan’s and Dispirto’s work is characterised by cartoonish exaggerations of modern day banalities. BanBan fills the canvas with voluptuous bodies, often engaged in familiar domestic acts – eating a Chinese, scrolling through your phone, shaving your legs. Likewise, Dispirito’s paintings recall humdrum activities of everyday existence like walking the dog in the park, having a coffee, eating an ice cream. However, this leisurely illusion is offset by the ironic and self-aware tone of the artists.
BanBan’s work reflects a portrait of the society in which she lives – the situations she witnesses, that pass by as unremarkable, at a glance. Through the process of painting she filters this generic imagery, imbuing it with the intimacy and personal touch that redirects it towards a more autobiographical storyline. BanBan works on different layers of paint through an additive and substrate process until she feels the image is complete. The appetizing palette she uses contrasts with a certain degree of frustration felt in some of her paintings.
The analog painting’s relationship with digital technology plays a key role in Dispirito’s practice. All of his works start life with the use of iPhone apps – the drawings and animations composed in this digital space are then made into paintings which mimic the digital textures and colours of these studies. In his most recent works Dispirito focuses on subjective human states of being. His subject matter is isolated and reduced, becoming the focus for painterly exercises in colour, volume and style. The digital plasticity found in the bold colours and simplified shapes – as well as the range of emotions that they convey – creates an uneasy atmosphere in the works. Dispirito’s dreamscapes have more than a splash of technicolour plasticity about them; although at first glance the candy colours maintain their visual appeal – they are not necessarily somewhere we would want to live.