x ORLA

Orla is an Irish and Berlin based artist exploring the deeper memory world of archetypes and how they resonate in the landscape around us.

A self-taught artist with a degree in History of Art at Trinity College Dublin in 1999. Growing up in the West of Ireland influenced her exploration of memory and imagination, both of which are central to her work and rather than specific places or people are a deeper reflection on nature and the ways it can develop her experience of the present, by means of a generational memory that is a thread she tries to tease out in her paintings, unravelling the hidden ecstasies and agonies that our natural surroundings hold.

All of Orla’s work is born from her physical paintings, digitally enhanced, manipulated, many to the point of abstraction whereby colour becomes the primary communicator. These new discoveries and methods of creating have helped her overcome blocks in her artistic and emotional comprehension, giving courage to go against the grain and resist clinging on to a single approach, instead working intuitively for an audience of one, switching from paint to collage to photo editing and back again. Without judgement, a desire for validation, or awareness of competition. It has brought her full circle to where she began.

ORFHLAITH EGAN by XPLOIT

Our history molds who we are and what we pursue. Not only as creators, but as humans seeking for a place that makes sense according to our experience. Sometimes we forget that almost everything we are and we do has it’s own raw connection with nature and our environment. There is where you will find Orla’s work, being a reminder, in the balance between a memory and the desire to exist disconnected from the past.

I was immediately attracted to Orla’s work the very first moment I saw it. Love at first sight they say. Art is whatever you are ready to take for, and I found myself in the conjunction of having found an extreme delicacy to represent what a memory looks like over the pass of time and the desire to escape and investigate the future. Although obvious, it is obligated to mention the force of nature Orla is when selecting colors. You will find calm, peace and tranquility, but often these soft emotions will execute also in a loneliness that embarks you on a journey to experience a sensation of void. A vivid snapshot of what we may face as individuals, an honest conversation about how to confront the reality.

Time is a relevant gravitational subject because it is the only truth that exists. Orla’s work deeps down on how time and experience define our motifs, creating impossible landscapes that are originated in our childhood, escalated to abstract representations of a blurred idea of comfort and then turned into evolutionary pieces of our dreams.

The interaction between physical and digital supports allows Orla to create unique connections that empower the conversation in a world that is unequivocally changing, mastering both situations and keeping relevant the two at the same time.

And that is what I feel when looking at Orla’s work: captivated in each scene by the beauty of the color extensions, irregular shapes and outstanding compositions, all driven by an unrelentless pursuit of the place where we all are or will be.

XPLOIT x ORLA gallery takeover will happen during March 2022 in XPLOIT gallery in voxels.