page_title: Carla Arocha
section_title: Work
hierarchical_section_title: Carla Arocha / Work
caption_attribution_description: English: Tremor, 2006. Cubic structures, plexiglass, and mirror, Coll. Fonds régional d'art contemporain Bourgogne, Dijon. Installation view of the exhibition Carla Arocha: Dirt, Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, Switzerland, 2006.
context_page_description: Carla Arocha is a Venezuelan artist recognized for her work grounded in Minimalism, design, and geometric abstraction, specifically examples from her native Venezuela. She lives and works in Antwerp. Her work has been exhibited internationally since the mid-1990s.
context_section_description: Arocha first made her mark in the mid-1990s with a series of works borrowing from art, fashion, and biology. For example, her drawing Aqua Trace (1998) presents the visual melding of two distinct patterns: leopard spots and blood cells. Rendered in a bright shade of aqua, the two converging patterns are reminiscent of the animal prints found on fabric. Aqua Trace relates to an installation by Arocha entitled Hide (1997) for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and which featured leopard-print patterns created with mirrored Plexiglas. The mirrored Perspex patterns comprising Hide adorned the walls of Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art like a spectacular jewelled accessory, clusters of reflective plastic shimmering and swaying in the white gallery.
  Conversely to her sharp opulent Plexiglas installations and kinetic mobiles, Carla Arocha's paintings are flat and pale although the artist’s constant preoccupation with ornament lies beneath the minimal framework. For example, Arocha filled the hard-edged contour of a simple pitched-roof dwelling with bold, meandering loops in House (1999). Two large vertical paintings on canvas made by artist in 1999, entitled Blind Folded and Flare, perfectly echo the artist's passion for pattern, glamour and the superfluous. In these pieces, monochrome fields camouflage dots, diamonds and organic patterns are combined. Carla Arocha’s innate flair for extravagance is only hinted at through subtle shifts in the reflective character of the paint. 
  In 2006, Carla Arocha started working in collaboration with Stéphane Schraenen. Today, the artist-duo Arocha & Schraenen continues to produce pieces, exchange ideas and works in progress, before completing the final artworks together.
caption: Carla Arocha, Tremor, 2006, Cubic structures, plexiglass, and mirror, Coll. Fonds régional d'art contemporain Bourgogne, Dijon. Installation view of the exhibition Carla Arocha: Dirt, Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, 2006.
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