Residencia Milan 1
2010
27H x 43.3W inches
Juan Araujo
Residencia Milan 1 is a painting of a house surrounded by lush forest. The image depicted is both photorealistic and creates the illusion of an unfolded piece of paper, with creases and discolorations. In referring to the circulation of images, the painting raises questions of a viewer’s relationship to the image of a beautiful house: as icon, wish, or standard of beauty.
Juan Araujo’s works often begin with photographs he takes of a physical site. By reproducing fragments from urban images, facades and different architectures, he makes visible a tension between the desire to represent and the visual stereotypes. Araujo’s most recent paintings examine Venezuelan and Brazilian modernist architecture and the latter’s complex relationship to certain ideologies and belief systems that deeply marked Latin America’s cultural development in the mid-twentieth century.
