There is something excessive in Georgina Gratrix’s paintings (b. 1982, Mexico City). It’s not just the material that adds up on the canvas until turning into sculpture, nor the twisted forms defying the rules of painting. Rather, it’s a deliberate way of questioning the codes of representation and challenging our expectations.
Raised in Durban on the Eastern coast of South Africa—a tropical city overlooking the Indian Ocean—Gratrix is deeply connected to those places that are often a source of inspiration, as well as a setting for her productions. It’s a landscape of lush and vibrant jungles, which are frequently reflected in the subjects that we encounter in the exhibition.
In this new series of works presented by Monica De Cardenas, Gratrix keeps exploring landscape and still life, yet her subjects—flowers, animals, everyday objects, faces—are not faithful representations. Much of the work is dedicated to studio interiors and objects, like an ongoing meditation on painting itself and the tools of the profession, such as the recurring motif of a jug containing brushes.
Gratrix has always worked on the edge between attraction and disturbance. Her visual language is exuberant, dense, and ironic. She turns seemingly banal objects into subjects of focus. She exaggerates details, amplifies features, accumulates references, and reflects on real and imagined faces.
Gratrix stages the everyday, playing with its painterly clichés—irony becomes a critical tool, a lens through which to look at tradition while simultaneously dismantling it. Her work is rich with references to 20th-century painting traditions, including clear citations to South African visual culture through references to artists like Penny Siopis, Irma Stern, or Robert Hodgins. "All painting is a conversation with the history of painting," Gratrix says, and this ongoing dialogue with the past manifests in her style, blending influences into a constant reflection on painting guidelines and their possible reinterpretation through a wry and personal viewpoint.
Perhaps what strikes one most powerfully in her practice is the understanding of painting, not merely as a means of expression but as a living, pulsing body— her works become a physical and mental space where images take shape and manifest weight. The canvas surface becomes a merging space, where paint develops a sculptural effect, heightening the tactile density and visual force of her compositions. The works on display seem to embody an exercise in freedom, a gesture of intensity, capable of subverting genres and making ambivalence visible through irony.
Micola Clara Brambilla
Georgina Gratrix has had solo exhibitions in major museums and galleries throughout South Africa as well as in Berlin, Mexico City and Los Angeles. Her works have been acquired by well-known private collections such as the Norval Foundation, the Missoni Collection and the Peres Art Museum, Miami. in Cape Town, where she lives and works, she had a personal exhibition at the Norval Foundation in 2021 and at Irma Stern Museum in 2022-2023.
