Victoria Gitman
b. 1972, Buenos Aires, Argentina; lives and works in Hallandale Beach, Florida
Victoria Gitman creates small-scale oil paintings that challenge the viewer’s perception by painstakingly reproducing to scale seductive and luxurious objects, such as fur purses, jewelry, and details of paintings by Old Masters. Through a laborious process that involves long painting sessions and the use of magnifying glasses and specific light sources, Gitman interrogates these objects and their statuses, creating a complex web of value relationships between the real and the represented, illusionism and verisimilitude. For La Trienal, Gitman is exhibiting a series of new paintings based on vintage sequined jackets from the 1980s. This body of work’s historical references range from the geometric abstraction of artists like Mark Rothko and Piet Mondrian, to the Renaissance tradition of trompe l’oeil. Responding to a primarily male tradition, Gitman’s practice claims a regendering of painting: “The works point to the implicit identification of painting’s surface as feminine, bringing to the fore the traditional gendering that is embedded in the pictorial experience itself.”