Inhabitations is Lautaro Cuttica’s first solo exhibition at Gallery North. This exhibition of small, medium and large-scale oil paintings highlights the artist’s use of architectural forms, his expressionist approach, and his own, ongoing inner discovery. Trained as an architect, Cuttica asserts that architecture is often present in his approach to painting. At times, architecture inspires a distinct sense of inhabitation within his creative practice. Cuttica psychologically dwells in his painted spaces as he creates them, building them in a manner akin to how we create a home, weaving together a living space from the unique network of our belongings. Other times, architecture exists in his work as a protagonist, a character. Walls and sharp perspectives emerge from a distance. Scale is expansive, the setting ambiguous. We are at once everywhere and nowhere. Each work is populated by figures that stand or sit in silent dialogue with Cuttica’s spaces. Figures are generalized, abstract, and few in number. Garments are hazy, features are timeless, emotions are deep. His characters search inwardly, resting or standing amid rich earthen hues, heavily textured surfaces, and bold contrasts – the kind of ferocious color palette utilized in the past by the German Expressionists to evoke serious moral urgency, universal conflict, or the subversion of paradigms. As Cuttica states “life is in fact, at its essential core, totally absent of logic. True existence follows no order and is not constrained by rules or paradoxically even, the absence of rules. An embrace of this hidden truth is a gateway to peace, and for me is the most profound method in my work.” Inhabitations explores the strange interplay between Cuttica’s rare architectural world and his inner searchings, deriving from it a sense of self-renewing wonder and spiritual nourishment that speaks to how our physical experience of architecture shapes and sometimes distorts our inner lives in mysterious ways.

In conjunction with Inhabitations, Gallery North will also host “Creating Spaces: A Conversation on Art and Architecture” featuring Lautaro Cuttica, as well as local architects Alex Badalamenti, Frances Campani, Michael Schwarting, Paul Randall, and Jeremy Linzee.

Born in Buenos Aires, Lautaro Cuttica holds a Bachelors of Architecture from the Cooper Union, and is now based in Flanders, New York. His artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and can be found in many major corporate and private collections.