R.DRADA
FIRE PORTRAIT
OIL ON CANVAS
2023
RDrada (b. 1986) is an American artist based in Berlin, Germany.
The works of Rdrada are about those who are living in the shadow of power. Female figures face the viewer while contorting themselves in misery and their spirits seethe in alarming colors, signifying paranoia, scattered shames and darkening pains. Resentment, paranoia, anger radiate the atmosphere in the background. Here, no emotion is ever invisible again. R. Drada’s violent exuberance is the reverse of inhibitions, the wild blaring of each and every emotion of regularly ignored, not only categorized but alive on their own means. Emotions are not simply the products of their human hosts, but live and breathe independently. They haunt the atmosphere of their human figures, but travel on further, populating landscapes with their breadth of intensity. Colors are selected not for their playfulness but follow the rule of the jungle– the brighter the colors, the more poison they offer. Daring, dragged paint signifies the refusal to comply and suggest the exasperation at being required to comply or contort oneself into tortuous forms. R. Drada even enlists the thickness of resistant, stubborn paints to drag viewers into these figures of sullen and colorful resistance.
