& remember, loneliness

is still time spent

with the world

—Ocean Vuong

Mari Eastman’s paintings may have glitter, or they may come from fashion magazines but there’s something that places them in a universe completely alien and distant from bling bling. Their blurred faces become an antidote to the Clarendon filter. They stand more suggestive, insinuating, close to the attraction of the myopic and elusive gaze.

More than a concept or a narrative, the exhibition evokes a tone, an atmosphere created by the various landscapes, people and animals that it contains.

They attract us like the photographs found in flea markets, because of their anonymity and their mystery, of solitary figures, moments and objects that contain something that continually escapes. 

Brushstrokes are similar to the mood of animals, difficult to photograph because they are unpredictable, they don’t mind being dirty or sabotaging a perfect scene.

Like the glimmer of insecurity hidden in the elegance of maturity.

Like the reflection of the sun on the crockery of a plate of leftover food, in a relaxed after-dinner atmosphere.

Like the perfection of out-moded women’s hairstyles, so melancholic.  

Like the fragile pattern of a brown moth’s wings.

Like the folds in the fabric of a wet swimsuit that is slightly too big for us.

Like that landscape photo we took wrongly from the train.  

At the antipodes of the overly scripted and clear-cut texts of algorithms, the obviousness of the produced and studied discourses that flood the press, from everything that has to do with the supposed reality, so augmented, so perfect, so normative that it is confused with the fake, always optimised and profitable. Ambiguity, pleasure and poetry are more necessary than ever.

—Text by Rosa Lleó