Pompeii Gray

Gallery: GAVLAK

Date: October 26 - November 20, 2022

GAVLAK is proud to announce Pompeii Gray, the gallery’s first solo presentation of the work of Los Angeles based artist Iva Gueorguieva. The exhibition showcases three sculptures alongside seven new, ambitiously scaled works in acrylic and collage that mark Gueorguieva’s return to the stretched canvas after a three year immersion in the making of unstretched and at times double-sided tapestry paintings.

Read Pompeii Gray Press Release

The genesis of the Pompeii Gray works was her sudden decision to paint over a massive, colorful abstract painting from 2017 with white gesso and washes of gray. Gueorguieva’s new paintings are works in low relief: layers of muslin, gauze, and pigment combine to blur the difference between the raw edges of strips of fabric and the illusionism of a painted line. Variegated layers of gray form a miasmatic haze that hangs over strata of bright colors and agitated lines that churn beneath the surface to reveal flashes of figures, human and animal. Like the bodies uncovered in the centuries-long process of excavating Pompeii from its blanket of volcanic ash, Gueorguieva’s compositions invite speculation about the relationships of the creatures embedded in the dense layers to one another. Though originally compelled to strip her work from the stretchers, Gueorguieva’s act of generative destruction ultimately inspired her to reconceptualize the canvas as a site of possibility and discovery, like the framed sieve of an archaeologist sifting through the layers of history.

Gueorguieva envisages the interpersonal exchanges we perform in the thick of unfathomable disaster.