Alexandra Pacula “Megacity”

Gallery Henoch

[Image: Alexandra Pacula "Whirling Crescent" Oil on Canvas, 64 x 88 in.]

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Blinking skyscrapers light up Gallery Henoch in Megacity Alexandra Pacula’s third solo show at the gallery.

For the exhibition, Pacula traveled to Dubai, Tokyo and Shanghai in addition to her native New York City to record video and still images in hyper-sessions that lasted only a few days. Returning to the studio, she unravels the delirious and fascinating sensation of these four cities in oil on canvas. “Modern cities [are] being built as enticing spectacles for tourist designed like Times Square,” notes Pacula, “whirling with lights and buzzing ‘starchitecture’ to attract people like a moth to the flame.” Her new paintings are about the spectacle of the megacity. Her canvases convey the intoxicating energy of these citadels. Through aerial perspective, Pacula captures glassy facades twisting into the air. Or, in panoramic views, fleeting lights transform into long silky pulls of paint. Sometimes the picture is broken up by a cacophony of windows represented by fluorescent dashes and dots. Pacula is preoccupied with the atmosphere of the modern city, not the people in them, and yet we feel viscerally present among the architecture and the lights. In this way she invites the viewer to share in her enchantment of the restless metropolis.

Polish-born artist Alexandra Pacula (b. 1979) moved to the United States at the age of fourteen. Pacula received her BFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in 2002 and completed her MFA in 2006 at Montclair University after which she set up her studio in Bushwick (Brooklyn). Simultaneous to her studio practice she apprenticed in art restoration. Pacula honed her craft to develop glazing methods, indirect painting and other processes used in restoration. With every technical evolution her canvases become more complex investigations of velocity, color and light. In paintings like Whirling Crescent (64 x 88 inches, pictured above) she masterly conveys the movement of bright lights and reflections set against dark subjects. In 2015 the artist set up a second studio outside of the city in the Poconos Mountains, PA.