Heike Dempster

With Beautiful Disaster, a solo exhibition at RiseUp Gallery in Wynwood, Kazilla presents a body of predominantly new works. In 15 paintings and 8 sketches Kazilla explores her maturation as an artist as well as the duality of nature and herself.

Kazilla’s art is detail oriented and complex, as up to 30 layers of paint and imagery create works that are abundant in content. A central figure is surrounded by color-saturated imagery derived from flora and fauna as well as geometric aspects, symbolisms from various cultures and abstract elements. In her newer works the artist has decided to take a reverse look and strip her pieces down to the raw elements. In what she calls a “natural evolution” of her work, Kazilla explores a newfound simplicity while retaining elements of her distinct style such as her use of color to evoke varied emotional responses from the viewer.

The new paintings fall into two categories: abstract and figurative. The abstract pieces are even more of a departure from Kazilla’s work over the past few years as she now plays with movement, color combinations and texture through the use of sea salt. The paintings present a less controlled environment, letting go of the borders created by rigidly and precisely executed geometric lines in favor of fluidity and chance.

The figurative paintings feature a central character, but rather than occupying the negative space as they did before, the characters are now surrounded by negative, mainly white space, allowing the eye and mind to settle on the center of the painting. The works still contain layered and multi-faceted ideas and content that reveals itself gradually, but Kazilla lets her own duality take over in her juxtapositions of precision and geometry versus fluid muted pastels that go beyond the lines and colors merging and connecting in new ways.

The paintings in Beautiful Disaster essentially represent the junction where physical law and logic meet with spirit and emotion. Kazilla merges this dichotomy within each of her works and explores the duality of not just nature and humanity at large but also within herself. The universal duality is presented quite literally in the artist’s choice of subject such as animals and women from around the world. Additionally, Kazilla expresses duality conceptually in her lines, color choices and the free flowing paint meeting the artist’s brush control.

In her new paintings Kazilla has found a balance in expressing and exploring duality, understanding herself and evolving as an artist. In this beautiful disaster she created, we see ourselves and we see the world, in a natural balancing act between emotions, spirit, physics, and logic.

Kazilla’s Beautiful Disaster through April 20 at RiseUp Gallery, 187 NW 27th Street, Miami