Varda Caivano talks through her works in 'Accordion Fields'

14 March 2024

Varda Caivano’s paintings reveal themselves gradually. The viewer’s eye - once adjusted to her atmospheric, glowing tertiary colours - completes these resolutely open-ended compositions. Frequently painting on unprimed linen, Caivano recently also began using oil stick on velvet. Her ambiguous depicted forms simultaneously suggest aerial landscapes and the structure of cells or minerals. The introduction of golds and silvers in her palette also brings to mind gilded Mesopotamian paintings or Byzantine manuscripts.

Caivano graduated from the Royal College of Art, London in 2004. She is currently a tutor-artist at De Ateliers in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Previous exhibitions include ‘Luz de Luna (Moonlight)’, Labor, Mexico City (2024); Mendes Wood, Brussels, Belgium (2022) and São Paulo, Brazil (2021); Lulu, Mexico City (2022); ‘Slow Painting’, Hayward Gallery Touring, UK (2020); Renaissance Society, Chicago, USA (2015); Chisenhale Gallery, London (2007) and Kunstverein Freiburg, Germany (2006).