The women in Cristina BanBan’s 2018 After the Storm nearly float across the canvas in a cloud-like arrangement of bulbous, amorphous bodies. BanBan has garnered international recognition for her fleshy, stylized figures in everyday moments of intimacy. Nodding to abstraction while remaining grounded in the human form, BanBan is masterful in her experimentative foreshortening of the body and dissolution of forms into color. Of her use of color, BanBan has remarked, "instead of a realistic color representation, in these new works I’m putting an emphasis on the way each color works independently outside the figure." Mixing light pastels and stark whites with flesh tones and soft outlines, BanBan melds her subjects with each other and with their background, drawing influence from her acute observations of familiar interactions amongst friends to create a lush figural landscape.
"I am interested in how the body moves, stands, and interacts with others. I focus on the shapes and spaces that appear when bodies overlap and create new forms."
—Cristina BanBan
Painted while the artist was living in London, After the Storm was shown in the breakthrough exhibition Specially Normal at Kristin Hjellegjerde in 2018. The present work is a standout example from the series for its number of figures, compositional complexity and total elimination of identifiable surroundings. Nodding towards the artist’s later paintings of overlapping nudes, BanBan’s pastel background bleeds into her subjects while varying skin tones meld across figures. In an achievement of color and form, After the Storm is a brilliant celebration of contemporary female sensuality and intimacy.
