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Luchita Hurtado: I Live I Die I Will Be Reborn
at Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London (through 20 October)
Reviewed by Christopher P Jones
There is something hypnotic about the work of Luchita Hurtado. She has mastered the art of suggestiveness, and much as dreams do, her works win our attention because of their peculiar logic.
In this show at London’s Serpentine Gallery, her most recent paintings are perhaps the most categorical in their message. Human and natural forms are shown in an uninterrupted fabric: standing figures with arms stretched become trees in forests; reproductive organs combine with flowers and fruits. These ecological paintings could pass as placards on a protest march, expressing the idea that all life shares common instincts and therefore is of equal value.
Hurtado has expressed how the first photographs of Earth from space in 1946 made a strong impression on her. “When I saw the first photographs of the world, where you saw this little planet in the darkness of space, it gave me the same feeling of tenderness that you have for family, for your own children. I feel very much that I’m part of this planet. That’s been very strong and influential all my life.”
The benefit of a retrospective exhibition is that later works can inform earlier works as well as the other way around. Looking at…
