Enrique Chagoya
Time Can Pass Fast or Slowly, 2009
Mixed media with acrylic on gessoed amate paper
40.5 x 40.75 in
Edition of 10

In Time Can Pass Fast or Slowly, Enrique Chagoya layered hand-painted acrylic colors and printed elements on gessoed amate paper to arrive at a visually sumptuous (and very funny) composition. In 1995, Chagoya was invited to complete a residency at Monet’s gardens in Giverny, giving him an opportunity to paint the same locations that Monet had depicted nearly a century earlier. Here, an idyllic background reminiscent of Monet’s 1899 painting Water Lily Pond is the setting for an episode of Chagoya’s trademark “reverse anthropology,” inverting a Eurocentric approach to art and appropriation by imagining an Africanesque statue nibbling on an unfortunate, Picasso-like Frenchman.