Efraín López is pleased to announce details of its presentation at EXPO Chicago with a solo presentation of works by Braxton Garneau in the fair’s EXPOSURE section.

For EXPO Chicago, Braxton Garneau will present a new series of paintings continuing his exploration of materiality and the figure. Garneau is interested in what he refers to as “material honesty,” or the idea that certain energies exist in materials, specifically living materials, that can imbue the work with their power. His portraits are built up from asphalt, a natural emulsion of mineral elements and bitumen, in reference to Pitch Lake in Trinidad, the world’s largest naturally exposed deposit of asphalt, where his grandparents live.

Pitch Lake is a generative environment that sustains flora and fauna including hummingbirds, nymph lilies, and birds of paradise, while also carrying the matter of eras of previous inhabitants. In this constant churning of life, humans, plants and animals both emerge and submerge. As transformations occur at this liminal site, both life and death are celebrated.

In this endless and imagined space, removed from any particular place or time, the focus is on the relationship between uninhibited bodies and the cycles of the natural world. Here, Garneau creates a space where mortality is not feared, but understood as part of the cycles of life necessary to create potential for the things that have yet to come.