{"id":108036,"date":"2021-05-17T19:07:46","date_gmt":"2021-05-17T17:07:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/?p=108036"},"modified":"2021-05-18T18:00:02","modified_gmt":"2021-05-18T16:00:02","slug":"larissa-de-jesus-negron","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/2021\/05\/17\/larissa-de-jesus-negron\/","title":{"rendered":"Larissa De Jes\u00fas Negr\u00f3n\u2019s path to enlightenment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What does it mean to be after the sun? It means standing behind the source of all \u2013 of light, life, growth, death \u2013 in the pursuit of lost questions and blazing truths. There are no chasms here, no monsters to be fought; there\u2019s desire, exposure, affect. A wish to absorb some of that clarity, to pay attention, and then to look back in. A will to redraw the threshold that separates one from the impossibility of complete realization, of pure understanding \u2013 over and over again. The work of Larissa De Jes\u00fas Negr\u00f3n and her latest solo show Detr\u00e1s del Sol<\/em> at Real Pain<\/a> stems from a comparable sense of yearning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Larissa De Jesu\u0301s Negro\u0301n Commuting with Scoliosis<\/em>, 2019-2020. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 20 x 16 in, 50.8 x 40.64 cm. Courtesy of Selenas Mountain and the Artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Installation view: These Opalescent Dreams of Mine<\/em>: Amy Bravo, Larissa De Jes\u00fas Negr\u00f3n, & Anjuli Rathod, Selenas Mountain, Ridgewood, NY, March-April 2021. Courtesy of Selenas Mountain and the Artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In her pieces, embodiment and self-reflection are mediated by the flow of her own consciousness through the limits of physical spaces, be that a room or the canvas. Her process is based on pushing the boundaries of the painterly medium, bringing about a non-linear reflection on the concept of distance, which often develops into an inward-looking speculation, in time and space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the non-linearity of her approach, storytelling is key in De Jes\u00fas Negr\u00f3n\u2019s practice. The mundanity of a beauty routine, whose ordinariness prompts an outburst of dread in Invierno en Forest Hills <\/em>(2021), unearths misplaced feelings of hope and faith towards the self in Drowning in Expectations<\/em> (2020), where it is imbued with a longing for what is other. At a first glance, daily life may seem an unassuming subject. But there\u2019s a darkness and, most importantly, a possibility for self-reflection and deep comprehension in the recurrent nature of habit as De Jes\u00fas Negr\u00f3n depicts it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Larissa De Jesu\u0301s Negro\u0301n, Vida<\/em>, 2020, 48″ H x 60″ W, acrylic and Oil on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Real Pain.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In her art, frames \u2013 of a bathroom cabinet, a shower curtain, a chest of drawers, a car in motion, a windowsill \u2013 become time-frames: windows onto a different reality, evanescent projections of a geographically displaced but emotionally persistent past. Still life compositions of everyday, familiar items materialize on tables-turned-oceans overlooking New York\u2019s cityscape, as in Vida <\/em>(2020), as well as in sinks and bathtubs filled with water \u2013 the chosen locus of introspection, self-analysis and spirituality for De Jes\u00fas Negr\u00f3n. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first time she painted water, she recalls, was to represent tears. \u201cWhen you\u2019re being honest with yourself, or when you\u2019re praying, or talking to yourself and realizing things about yourself, crying is just part of the game. Crying is a way to let go and move past.\u201d Her work embraces water as a recurring topic, simultaneously seeking to express it in its less tangible forms \u2013 as vapor, mist, clouds \u2013 and investigating it as a sculptural entity. Through an agile use of a technique that mixes the weightlessness of airbrush with the density of oil paint, De Jes\u00fas Negr\u00f3n plays with texture and depth, dissolution and crystallization. Droplets turn into solid matter. Beads and crystal balls are repeatedly scattered on her canvases as floating residues of emotions and intimacy. They are vivid mementos of a yearning that simply won\u2019t go away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Larissa De Jesu\u0301s Negro\u0301n, Shower Dreams<\/em>, 2020, 60″ H x 30″ W, oil on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Real Pain.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The overarching narrative that underlies De Jes\u00fas Negr\u00f3n\u2019s body of work is enmeshed with a deep-rooted nostalgia for her hometown, Puerto Rico, and how it continues to impact her experience in New York. Each of her paintings carries the memories of her life on the island, and speaks of her want to go back to its landscapes, rivers, rainforests and beaches, and to reunite with her family. \u201cEven if I don\u2019t think a work is talking about my childhood, my home or Puerto Rico, it does,\u201d the artist tells. \u201cEvery single time that I make something I\u2019m talking about home.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

De Jes\u00fas Negr\u00f3n grew up in Guaynabo, a city on Puerto Rico\u2019s northern coast. Before she started making art, she enjoyed watching her aunt draw and make doodles \u2013 it was the realization that she could \u201cmake something out of nothing\u201d that sparked her interest in the discipline. She began to attend art classes at nine; she would paint together with her father, just for fun. \u201cHe would want me to find meaning in whatever I was doing, so that definitely pushed me to keep creating.\u201d Today, what fuels her productive drive is that very search for meaning and understanding. Her father also had \u201ca bunch of Dal\u00ed prints around the house.\u201d Surrealist art, and specifically the work of Frida Kahlo, Louise Bourgeois and Iv\u00e1n Tovar, became an early source of aesthetic and conceptual inspiration for De Jes\u00fas Negr\u00f3n. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But her love for Surrealism is strictly tied to an admiration of its capacity to \u201ctake you out of whatever you\u2019re living \u2013 while also taking you into whatever you\u2019re living.\u201d At the core of the movement was a duality that \u2013 through an elliptical portrayal of reality and a violent piercing of the unconscious \u2013 resonates with the artist\u2019s gaze on, and pictorial treatment of, physical and psychological boundaries. Across her works, the perspective shifts from narrow close-ups to bird\u2019s eye views, as a tension between interiors and exteriors, comfort and desolation, the actual and the imagined develops. The rift between memory and real life opens up a possibility to explore ideas of closeness and distance in time for De Jes\u00fas Negr\u00f3n, and to unravel something inherently conflictual, that is, relating to positive remembrances of the past while being conscious of the bleakness of the present moment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Larissa De Jesu\u0301s Negro\u0301n, Aftermath<\/em>, 36\u201d H x 36\u201d W, 2020, acrylic and oil on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Real Pain.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Larissa De Jesu\u0301s Negro\u0301n, Sick of Home<\/em>, 2021, 40″ H x 30″ W, acrylic and Oil on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Real Pain.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What brings her back to the home as a topic of inquiry is, ultimately, a search for acceptance. In Sick of Home <\/em>(2021), a bathroom is superimposed onto the painting of the beach of Arecibo. \u201cIt was me just wanting to feel at the beach, wanting to feel that moment again \u2013 just a little bit longer. But when I painted the beach I realized: well, I\u2019m not there. It\u2019s not being honest enough, or present enough. I\u2019m not accepting my reality. And that\u2019s why I painted the bathroom, the Raid spray for the roaches\u2026 it\u2019s a reality thing.\u201d Her work progressed into this path relatively recently, when being forced to stay home due to quarantine heightened a pre-existing interest in the power of interior spaces to mold the behavior of their inhabitants. At the very beginning of the same period she bought an airbrush machine and produced a series of portraits of grieving people. \u201cIn each one of those portraits you can see me trying to learn. You can see the spills, and the machine getting clogged, and the mess on the paper. I sold them out for really cheap too \u2013 like forty dollars a pop [\u2026] I regret it. There\u2019s something about these portraits that I\u2019m never gonna be able to recreate with airbrush, because now I know how to use it.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mistakes and accidents are a source of excitement for De Jes\u00fas Negr\u00f3n but she recognizes that, as she continues practicing, they happen less and less. The volume of her production inevitably leads her to fall into a routine. What follows is the loss of a sense of purpose. \u201cThat is my biggest fear \u2013 that I don\u2019t feel connected to my work, that I\u2019m not learning something, or discovering something.\u201d When that happens, she switches mediums, \u201cwhether that be clay, chalk, or pastels, or changing my surface, maybe moving to wood or canvas when I work with paper. When you switch medium, it gives you new things to think about and new challenges to face. That keeps you fresh. There\u2019s no space of discovery within habit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Larissa De Jesu\u0301s Negro\u0301n, Topic of Religion<\/em>, 2019. 57″ H x 46″ W, oil on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Real Pain.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

If experimentation is her favorite antidote, technique is the driving force behind De Jes\u00fas Negr\u00f3n\u2019s work: her future plans revolve around the medium, not the subject. The contrast between three-dimensional media, like modeling paste and thickly laid oil paint, and airborne pigment, with its immaterial quality, has become a crucial device for the artist to test texture\u2019s potential, expand her formal lexicon, and start telling a larger story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the focus of her practice \u2013 De Jes\u00fas Negr\u00f3n confirms \u2013 is unabashedly on herself, feeling connected to her identity (and connecting with people through it) is the only condition for her to keep working. It\u2019s also where she draws her motivation from. \u201cWhen I feel that a work is connected to something that I am \u2013 my identity, my fears, my desires \u2013 or something that talks about me, that gives me a rush. It keeps me wanting to explore and understand that.\u201d Art is an arena where true, profound learning can happen, and serves as a practice of healing and inner growth for De Jes\u00fas Negr\u00f3n. To her, it\u2019s a way to \u201cprocess things as envy, jealousy, hatred \u2013 things that are very human and we all have felt.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Larissa De Jesu\u0301s Negro\u0301n, I need you to fix me<\/em>, 2020, 36″ H x 30″ W, oil and acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Real Pain.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Some of the instances where the struggle to reach an understanding of her own feelings, the search for enlightenment, and the necessity of change manifest are I need you to fix me<\/em> (2020), Fixing old habits<\/em> (2021), Waiting for a rude awakening<\/em> (2020). However, when searching for answers, she turns to philosophy. Speaking of this domain, the artist mentions how Philosophical Meditation<\/em> (2020) is a direct reference to Alain de Botton\u2019s work on the topic of emotional education, and to his book titled The School of Life: An Emotional Education<\/em> (2019). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Engaging in philosophical meditation, De Jes\u00fas Negr\u00f3n explains, is a matter of spending time with yourself and asking questions. It means to become receptive and acquire the ability to work through life\u2019s challenges on your own. The point is not to avoid the feels. \u201cI don\u2019t wanna ignore the things that I\u2019m feeling, or not give them enough attention. Things tend to build up and then you\u2019re left with a bunch of anxiety and jealousy that you don\u2019t understand.\u201d For De Jes\u00fas Negr\u00f3n, the parallel between art and the principle of philosophical meditation resides in their shared outcome. \u201cIt makes me understand myself, just like my art work does.\u201d Perhaps, in the end, life \u2013 not unlike art \u2013 is about conflict management. \u201cIt\u2019s such a simple practice\u201d, she notes. \u201cBut only through practice you can become aware.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Things tend to build up and then you\u2019re left with a bunch of anxiety and jealousy that you don\u2019t understand.” On Larissa De Jes\u00fas Negr\u00f3n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":108029,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1793],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-to-be-discovered"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}