£4,000.00
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This series of work explores the tension between utopia and illusion, where paradise is both a dream and a distortion. Blazing suns cast sharp refractions across the sky, while black moons rise as symbols of absence, mystery, and the unseen forces shaping our perceptions. Palm trees, iconic emblems of tropical escape, stand still—fixed in time like video stills, fragmented moments of an imagined elsewhere.
Bougainvillea, with its vivid magentas and fiery oranges, weaves through these landscapes like nature’s own neon—both lush and excessive, organic yet ornamental. Its unruly, sprawling presence contrasts with the stillness of the scenes, embodying the duality of paradise as something both wild and curated, seductive yet untamed. In these works, bougainvillea acts as a symbol of overgrown desire, its delicate bracts paper-thin yet impossibly resilient, much like the fragile yet persistent fantasy of an idyllic world.
A vivid color palette heightens the sense of artificiality, evoking the oversaturated hues of travel postcards, digital screens, and nostalgic landscapes. Electric blues bleed into molten oranges, neon pinks dissolve into deep purples—colors that suggest both the sublime beauty of nature and the uncanny quality of a world too perfect to be real. The intensity of these colors reflects how paradise is often mediated through screens, filters, and memory, transforming natural beauty into a spectacle that is both mesmerizing and estranged.
This visual language draws upon art historical depictions of idealized nature—spaces untouched by human presence, designed for contemplation rather than habitation. Paradise has long been imagined as a place beyond time, yet these works acknowledge the constructed nature of such ideals. The absence of people intensifies their dreamlike quality, reinforcing the notion that paradise exists only in the imagination—an unattainable mirage.
Engaging with a lineage of artists who question the fabrication of paradise, these works evoke a dreamlike stillness and ghostly absence, mirroring the idea of an unreachable Eden. They challenge traditional notions of untouched landscapes by recognizing the contemporary filter through which we view them—a perspective shaped by advertising, cinema, and the endless loop of online imagery.