A Hug From The Art World Presents WOMEN LAUGHING SALAD By Pablo Barba

women laughing salad will open at A Hug From The Art World, 87 Newtown Lane, East Hampton, NY 11937, on Saturday, July 27th, with a reception from 4–7 PM. The exhibition will be open to visitors weekly from Wednesday to Sunday, 11AM–6 PM, through Saturday, August 31st.

This will be Barba's third exhibition with the gallery, occupying the former studio space of artist, Rashid Johnson. women laughing salad marks the artist's first solo exhibition in The Hamptons.

There is a famous meme—Woman Laughing Alone with Salad. It takes its title, and its image, from the countless stock photos depicting exactly that: a woman enjoying her healthy lunch with manic glee. In women laughing salad, Pablo Barba's latest series of oil paintings, the artist continues to make social commentary out of memes and stock situations, through both subtle exaggeration and art historical influences. Like the output of an AI algorithm fed prompt after prompt, shifting between repetition and minor variation on a theme, images begin to reiterate and turn in on themselves. Three women with salads. Three women one salad. One woman standing one woman sitting smiling salad.
Woman sitting smiling salad barefoot. Woman laughing salad.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Born in 1985 in Santiago de Chile, Pablo Barba grew up in the Chile of the nineties, a time and place shaped by rapid change. As the country abruptly transitioned from a long-lasting dictatorship which had plunged its citizens into international and social isolation, the return to democracy was accompanied by the promises of consumer culture and the arrival of the World Wide Web. Barba came of age as an artist in a society that was eager to participate and connect on a global scale – and the Web became a portal through which to experience the rest of the world. In a country that had once been defined by limited access to information, he found himself mining the annals of art history and the Internet simultaneously. In his paintings, Barba combines classical tropes of figurative painting with gestures and themes drawn from contemporary digital culture.

Pablo Barba earned an MFA from Columbia University (2016), an MA from Universidad de Chile (2014), and a BFA from Universidad Catolica de Chile (2009). His work has been exhibited at Galería Animal, Galería BECH, and Galería Juan Egenau in Santiago; at The LeRoy Neiman Gallery, The Wallach Gallery at Columbia University, The Fisher-Landau Center for Art, and The Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York; and solo exhibitions in New York and Los Angeles. He lives and works in New York.