Strauss & co - 16 February 2019, Cape Town

70 53 Alexandra Karakashian SOUTH AFRICAN 1988– Passing Series XVII 2012 oil on paper 75 by 103 cm R20 000 – 30 000 EXHIBITED The Black Box, Cape Town, Passages , December 2012. ITEM NOTES Alexandra Karakashian is best known for her use of unconventional paint- ing materials, like engine oil and salt, and reduced colour palette of black, white and grey. Winner of the Judy Steinberg Painting Prize and the Simon Gerson Distinction Award, this painting was produced a year after she graduated in 2011. Part of an open series of works started in her final undergraduate year and colloquially referred to as ‘blur paint- ings’, Karakashian exhibited these works at Stevenson, Salon 91 and dealer Charl Bezuidenhout’s short- lived Black Box space. The work evolved out of Karakashian’s earlier landscape paintings. Many of the blur paintings featured horizon lines and indistinct subjects. Uncertain of their value at first, thinking of them merely as sketches (hence the rough, taped edges), Karakashian was encouraged to continue with these works by artist and theorist Colin Richards. Sensuous and hazy, these abstract- ed works are an important bridge to Karakashian’s more recent abstract paintings. Sean O’Toole