Painting New Realities
Natasha Kissell at Eleven Gallery, London
When Charles Saatchi bought her wholegraduation show at the RCA back in 2003, South Africa-born Natasha Kissellwas just 25. Her latest show at London's Eleven gallery mixes retro 60s ideas of utopia with the aesthetics of the American sublime painters of the19th century, topped off with a Disney-esque color palette. Humorouslyborrowing its title from Baudelaire's “Artificial Paradises” —a prosepoem charting the poet’s exploration of his own consciousness (via drinking andsmoking, of course)—Kissell's fantastical new work is full of unexpectedjuxtapositions, putting real modernist architecture, neon-lit ski-lifts or 60spod-houses into wide-open landscapes and lush jungles.