V1 Gallery / Eighteen would like to thank all the artists that have created remarkable work and presented it with us during 2020. Actually, we would just like to thank all artists. Thank you for engaging the world, creating in times of turmoil and introducing us to new visions. Thank you to all the institutions, arts professionals and collectors who have supported us through this bewildering year. Thank you to all the art lovers around the globe that have visited one of our platforms physically or virtually. Your support means everything. No gallery is an Island.
The two 2021 new year cards were created by Robert Nava and Danielle Orchard.
Robert Nava
It’s Not Crying, Idiot…It’s Jumping, 2019
Acrylic and spray on canvas
102 x 102 cm
A shark with its teeth exposed, water splashing around its head and slightly melancholic eyes, or just eyes predetermined by the predator’s DNA. It can be hard to tell these days.
In his work, Nava engages both past and present in his own distinct manner. He clashes Sumerian, Mayan, Egyptian, Greek, Japanese and Roman mythology and symbolism with the mythology of popular culture, such as Jaws, Transformers, the backside of New York trucks, flamethrowers, private jets and jet-fueled, fully armed flying tigers! In writing it sounds eclectic, but in hard-core visceral painting it intuitively works if you dare to lose yourself in the paintings. Nava paints with a rare energy and courage, not everybody will be pleased.
In his work, Nava connects ritual, rhythm and mayhem. The eternal symbiotic battle between man and monster on canvas reflects the ongoing struggle in the studio between artist and canvas. The paintings are passageways – transformative tableaus that depict and embody the beginning and end of conflict.
Robert Nava (born 1985, Chicago, USA) lives and works in Brooklyn, USA. Nava received his MFA from Yale, New Haven, USA (2011) and his BA from Indiana University Northwest, Gary, USA (2008).
Danielle Orchard
Red Room Altar, 2020
Oil on linen
122 x 138 cm
The women Danielle Orchard portrays eat breakfast, take baths, play tennis, smoke cigarettes, occasionally arm wrestle, drink wine, have studio visits, masturbate on the couch, stare at the moon, hang out pool side and ponder existence in general. Many of them have an air of tristesse, lost in time and place. They are often naked, and while nudity is historically associated with a sense of fragility, this is not the case in Orchard’s paintings. The women seem indifferent to being observed naked, as if it is the least of their concerns. While the mood of several of the tableaus, many composed with references to 20th century Western art, is one of intimate reflection, anxiety and a sense of longing, these women are not waiting to be rescued. They all feel empowered, doing by not doing, the dare of sheer existence.
Danielle Orchard’s paintings are amalgams that straddle the margins between the personal and the collective. Part private minutiae from artist’s life and memories, and part visual restaging of Western art history’s sweeping legacies, they present an imagined version of ordinary life in which the interior worlds and motivations of the characters are one with their material presence. A poetic blend of the mundane and the mysterious. They encompass our everyday drama, the tectonic shifts in existence that presents itself, uninvited and unwarranted, upon us. The tableaus are about body and being, and we recognize ourselves in Orchard’s women, gender notwithstanding.
Danielle Orchard (born 1985, Michigan City, Indiana, USA) lives and works in Brooklyn, USA. She holds an MFA in painting from Hunter College, New York, USA (2013).
Holidays Service
V1 Gallery / Eighteen will be closed for holidays December 24, 2020 – January 4, 2021. The V1 Gallery Store will remain active during the holidays. Orders placed from December 23, 2020 – January 4, 2021 will not be shipped before January 7, 2021. For urgent matters, please contact mail@v1gallery.com