Andrea Caldarise: The Intersection of Location and Memory

Andrea Caldarise’s paintings, difficult to categorize, exist at an intersection between collective memory and public space, an intersection that negates any sort of clear-cut autobiographical narrative or interpretation as a specific landscape. Instead, one traverses the paintings as if moving through an irresolute and uncanny situation, the experience taking on something larger than the destination or the painting itself.  This experience moves us closer to an accumulation of historical events and points of view that can’t quite be defined, but are universally and collectively sensed. Andrea chooses to paint spaces she has visited repeatedly, revising her memories and interpretations of the location through time. Things get really interesting when Andrea begins to research a public space and incorporate memories of things that she has heard or failed to hear about each location.  

For example, Andrea’s painting, After Sargent, at the Luxembourg gardens, is a compilation of experiences of walking through the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, France, alongside childhood memories of studying John Singer Sargent’s painting, In The Luxembourg Gardens (1879), at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  She thoughtfully combined Sargent’s painted commentary with historical research about proposed plans for the gardens, including the placement of garden architecture and plants to curate a manicured environment and the designers’ intentions to circulate people and air throughout the city’s public space.  In fact, energy and movement through a historied public park are a paramount theme in After Sargent, at the Luxembourg gardens, along with Andrea’s feeling of simultaneously experiencing the gardens as both a memory and a new place.  Andrea also took note of what Sargent didn’t say in his painting, specifically leaving out a building to effectively move us through the painting again and again.

We sense movement in Sargent’s painting through the figures walking along a promenade set against the horizon of the park’s landscape.  In After Sargent, at the Luxembourg gardens, Andrea encapsulates the memory and history ofwandering as the subject.  Any sense of horizon has been removed.  Land, water, and botanical forms gesture as we walk through the painting and sense air circulating along with energy, stirring a familiar feeling.

Next, Andrea pointed to a painting she titled If you are qualified to assist, tell them, a gritty piece with an empty, charred trash can in the lower right corner and a small, dark tree near the center.  A black trail runs through the painting diagonally, and a large tree looms with black leaves while orange, fire-like brush strokes punctuate the left side.  The ground swirls around these forms in shades of green and yellow. This piece takes on a sublime mood as it references the history of Brooklyn’s Prospect Park along with Andrea’s diverse experiences there, including the discovery of mysterious contents in a trash can at the park.  Police were summoned and the area was caution-taped off, creating quite a scene that was never resolved, nothing in the news - just another disturbing and peculiar moment passing through the city. Andrea announced, “I think the world is a tragic place. Uncanny and disturbing things happen all the time.”  Indeed, If you are qualified to assist, tell them transforms Andrea’s experience and knowledge of Prospect Park into a jumping-off point that conveys a collective sense of unease, the feeling that our world is an unknown and bizarre environment with places that we believe to understand holding many untold stories.

If you are qualified to assist, tell them and After Sargent, at the Luxembourg gardens exemplify Andrea’s personalized use of public locales and memory in painting.  The intersection between space and memory acts as a catalyst for the expression of collective and historical experience.  In this way, the paintings become a compilation of multiple viewpoints and past experiences to be traversed psychologically, bringing one closer to a personal, yet universally shared moment.

Andrea Caldarise lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.  She holds an MA in Arts Administration from the University of Pennsylvania and a BFA in Art History and Painting from Tyler School of Art, Temple University.  Andrea has received numerous honors including a recent residency at Trestle Gallery, Brooklyn, NY and Painting Fellowships at the Contemporary Artist Center, Troy, NY.  Andrea’s paintings will be available at The Other Art Fair, an international fair where you can meet and talk with artists directly about their practice, hosted May 2 through May 5, 2019 in Brooklyn, NY.  You can see Andrea’s paintings and learn more about her work at andreacaldarise.com.