Fire and water complement each other in Flamenco and Flames, an exhibition that featured new drawings and paintings made by Parisian artist David Gista. Alluring movements in the Spanish Flamenco dance form parallel the smokey and fluid strokes Gista is able to achieve when applying a small torch or watercolor paint to paper. Inspired by the dancer’s body, Gista’s artwork aims to enhance how we experience movement and gesture by emphasizing the ephermeral quality of both art and dance.
Flamenco and Flames is presented with ThinkArt (Chicago) in conjunction with the video exhibition Videodance: Work from the Center Pompidou. ThinkArt™ is a contemporary, French-inspired art salon featuring celebrated and emerging artists from Chicago and around the world.
Many of the paintings, drawings and collages by David Gista depict the figure paused in motion with obscured facial features. By turning his figures away from us, Gista creates a sense of mystery and intrigue, and also a universal appeal. Utilizing a crème-brulé torch or smoldering cigarettes as tools of art-making, the image is burnished into the paper and cannot be erased. Gista employs the technique to explore the relationship between what is remembered and what cannot be forgotten. Numbers, letters, or the spines of books are common symbols in Gista’s work that reference the conflicted contemporary psyche torn between classical knowledge and the desire for the comforts and technologies of modern life.
