Peace Out

Annette Turrillo is darn proud of her gender. The Caracas-born, Paris-based artist is all about womanhood and the feminine mystique. Though she began her formal training in urban design, Turrillo branched into fine arts in the early ’90s and began showing seriously around the end of that decade. The linear rigors of her early academic interest are nowhere to be found now in her paintings, though. All of her large painted canvases continually explore a personal female iconography. The colorful works meld bright but hazy hues in portraits of abstracted women whose faces, or just body parts, are repeated and rendered in ways that are ethereal and almost sublime. But Turrillo didn’t leave her planning background behind. She also uses her canvases to create entire environments. Sometimes she renders her images in larger-than-life glass and other times surrounds them with candles for an altar-like experience. For her exhibition at the Frost Art Museum, opening Wednesday and running through April 1, Turrillo explores even larger themes. In “A Thought for the Planet/Un Pensamiento por el Planeta,” her concept turns beyond the universal feminine to the larger idea of introspection. To Turrillo, reflection and self-examination will bring us all more peace, and her series of installations at the Frost invites the viewer to engage in just that. Open your mind and say ah.
Tuesdays-Saturdays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sundays, 12-5 p.m. Starts: Jan. 25. Continues through April 1, 2012