loft studio in Bushwick, her paintings stand against the walls, unframed, their fleshy, vibrant hues contrasting the white of the sun-drenched studio. BanBan works on a large scale; her paintings are uniformly over seven feet tall. For years, her subject has been the female nude; showing women in various states of undress and repose, with the proportion of their bodies magnified. Multiple figures crowd the canvas, disrupting each other’s forms.
BANBAN: I don’t really think about color. I prepare the drawing, but I don’t really prepare how I will approach the painting and the colors. This is kind of tricky to explain because I am in the middle of realizing what I’m doing. I’m in the middle of understanding my own practice. But last year, after my shows, my approach was to just focus on expression and the movement and how much I could push figuration. After I finished this, I realized they were very emotionally charged.
BANBAN: Yes. Again, it’s very connected to my emotions. So for me painting is a kind of visceral function. I think you can really feel that in this series. Some of them may be a little bit more quiet. But it’s definitely common in all of these paintings. I have a certain velocity. I think maybe it’s a contraposition between the poses, which are kind of calm and relaxing, or pausing, where the way of approaching painting is much more rapid.
BANBAN: I don’t think it’s my part to say if I’m part of it or pushing against the tradition, but I can say I use female bodies because, for my own sake, it helps me talk about my emotions. That’s whyuse the female body. Obviously you can approach this topic in many different ways, like it’s a woman’s gaze painting a woman’s body, and that’s different from a man and the naked woman, of course. But that’s my answer. I think it’s more personal for me.