Insula, Solo Show - Chicago Artists Coalition
November 1st through December 19th 2024
In Insula (Latin for “island”), María Burundarena invites the viewer into a world of discovery, seduction, and intrigue, transforming overlooked and abandoned Chicago landscapes into immersive, sensory experiences. Influenced by her ongoing exploration of surfaces and perception, Burundarena reimagines spaces like Northerly Island—where urban debris forms an unlikely oasis—as sites of hidden beauty and tranquility. Through photography and installation, she captures the ephemeral qualities of these often forgotten places, layering her work with a sense of memory and time.
Her installations aim to seduce and confuse, triggering surprise and curiosity. The French-born, Argentina-raised artist works across multiple mediums—photography, print, collage, and digital projection—to reassemble fragments of reality, pushing the viewer to question their relationship to what they see. Her use of vibrant color—neon pinks, intense blues and holographic greens—reflects her upbringing in a digital world of screens, where images are fluid, flexible, and unbound by traditional frames. Surfaces, for Burundarena, are more than just visual; they carry encrypted messages that demand closer inspection. She describes the tone of her work as a "raging RGB," a nod to both her bold use of color and her relentless creative process.
Insula creates a space where the boundaries between reality and imagination blur. Burundarena's fascination with the passage of time, memory, and broken surfaces is woven into each piece, offering the viewer a new way to engage with the city and the gallery itself. By integrating the architectural elements of the Chicago Artists Coalition space and using mirrors to reflect and expand it, she invites us to step inside her world—to be absorbed by the layers of meaning, light, and color, and surrender into a deeply personal, yet collective, experience.
— Vasia Rigou, Curator
