Alexandra Barth
DOCUMENT Lisbon is delighted to present In the Country of Last Things, Alexandra Barth鈥檚 first exhibition in Portugal and inaugural solo show with the gallery. Featuring a new body of work, the exhibition traces the artist鈥檚 ongoing investigation into memory, material, and the quiet symbolism of everyday interiors.
Barth鈥檚 paintings explore how the spaces we inhabit retain traces of human experience through their furnishings, objects, and textures, even in the absence of people. With precisely layered applications of airbrushed paint, she renders hard surfaces with subtle softness, allowing their intention to sharpen as the gaze lingers. A red-striped curtain, a piano, porcelain bowls, the profile of a confession booth: these focused compositions resemble paused moments. They appear as quietly cinematic snapshots, yet sealed within their own logic. Each picture begins with a photograph taken by the artist, then translated into painting through a process that filters sensation through scale, distance, and time.
Barth, who grew up in Slovakia in the 1990s amid the visual austerity of Soviet-era housing, turns her attention to motifs that suggest both familiarity and dislocation. Now based in Sanguinetto, Italy, she gathers details from her current surroundings鈥攎arble moldings, mirrored wardrobes, fragments of domestic ornamentation鈥攁nd allows them to merge with earlier impressions. Her paintings collapse time and place, fusing architectural memory with present experience. The result is at once restrained and atmospheric, clear-eyed and melancholic.
The exhibition borrows its title from Paul Auster鈥檚 1987 novel, a dystopian narrative concerned with erasure, instability, and the objects that outlast us. Similarly, Barth鈥檚 compositions dwell in spaces where meaning is provisional, shaped by what remains after something鈥攐r someone鈥攈as left. Each work hovers between what is visible and what is withheld, shaped as much by what鈥檚 no longer there as by what remains. Her interiors suggest stories, but do not insist on them. They remain open, suspended, and vividly unresolved.
DOCUMENT Lisbon is delighted to present In the Country of Last Things, Alexandra Barth鈥檚 first exhibition in Portugal and inaugural solo show with the gallery. Featuring a new body of work, the exhibition traces the artist鈥檚 ongoing investigation into memory, material, and the quiet symbolism of everyday interiors.
Barth鈥檚 paintings explore how the spaces we inhabit retain traces of human experience through their furnishings, objects, and textures, even in the absence of people. With precisely layered applications of airbrushed paint, she renders hard surfaces with subtle softness, allowing their intention to sharpen as the gaze lingers. A red-striped curtain, a piano, porcelain bowls, the profile of a confession booth: these focused compositions resemble paused moments. They appear as quietly cinematic snapshots, yet sealed within their own logic. Each picture begins with a photograph taken by the artist, then translated into painting through a process that filters sensation through scale, distance, and time.
Barth, who grew up in Slovakia in the 1990s amid the visual austerity of Soviet-era housing, turns her attention to motifs that suggest both familiarity and dislocation. Now based in Sanguinetto, Italy, she gathers details from her current surroundings鈥攎arble moldings, mirrored wardrobes, fragments of domestic ornamentation鈥攁nd allows them to merge with earlier impressions. Her paintings collapse time and place, fusing architectural memory with present experience. The result is at once restrained and atmospheric, clear-eyed and melancholic.
The exhibition borrows its title from Paul Auster鈥檚 1987 novel, a dystopian narrative concerned with erasure, instability, and the objects that outlast us. Similarly, Barth鈥檚 compositions dwell in spaces where meaning is provisional, shaped by what remains after something鈥攐r someone鈥攈as left. Each work hovers between what is visible and what is withheld, shaped as much by what鈥檚 no longer there as by what remains. Her interiors suggest stories, but do not insist on them. They remain open, suspended, and vividly unresolved.
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