Nathalie Guarracino’s Endless (CYG, 2025)
Nathalie Guarracino’s paintings should, in fact, be endless. They should stretch on forever, forming a maze or a wraparound mural, akin to the Monet pavilion in Paris. Like Monet’s lily ponds, Guarracino’s landscapes are a single endless, soothing dream.
Unfortunately, like all dreams, Guarracino’s works inevitably end and when they do, we ask ourselves: What was it, really, that we just saw? A city rising beyond a flooded plain? A row of leafless trees framing a winter marsh? Were we gazing at a string of stars or a flurry of snowflakes? Guarracino’s paintings are abstractions, their exact subject is supposed to feel elusive, but the emotion they channel is unmistakable. They are gossamer morning dreams that leave behind a feeling and a faint memory of what we’ve just experienced.
For we know exactly what we feel while gazing at the stark and elegant April Morning: first a chill, perhaps an apprehension, then a fascination, and finally a relief that this otherworldly scene is but a vision. Far, executed in a similar palette, uses delicate rounded brushstrokes, almost pointelle like, evoking a coldness of stars or snowflakes, or maybe both, leaving the impression of a diorama, with us positioned in the middle.
The painterly technique differs from canvases to works on paper. Guarracino’s oils employ impasto which she partially removes in strategic places to create a sense of simultaneous opacity and transparence (Soon After; Until Tomorrow). Those thinned out patches are truly her signature—they are what makes the works so mysterious and otherworldly as they hint at passages into other dimensions, other dreams, other universes. The smaller acrylics are the worlds that lie behind those wormholes. By contrast, they don’t recede, don’t step away from us: they build volume gently but relentlessly, bringing themselves closer to us with each layer. The show correctly positions them side by side as they are two sides of the same enchanting universe.
- Anna Friedrich