Alexandra Baraitser contact@alexandrab.org.uk
 
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Reviews

 
"Her work revisits design classics, both modern and contemporary, and forces us to look at them again in a new way. While design often draws on the influence of art, it is rarer to see art taking its inspiration from design."
Financial Times, 17th March 2007


"Baraitser’s paintings highlight the contradictions of the current condition of modern furniture, still denoting ‘the new’ while simultaneously acting as ‘design classics’; embodying socialist thought while serving as symbols of social status. The relationship of painting to these subjects is itself highly relevant to Baraitser’s work. Using paint she labours to represent the patina and tone of objects which were designed in order to be mass produced. Through her dedication to each painting she emphasises the fetishistic qualities that these objects have acquired."
Eva Bensasson, reviewing "The Future Past, 8-30th March 2007"


"The exceptional solo exhibition from emerging British artist Alexandra Baraitser calls into question the nature of design and the conflict-ridden relationship between aesthetics and practicality."
Dr Astrid Wootton, The Design Centre - Tasmania, 30th March 2005


"..Getting them to understand, to share this passion....is hard. Which is why it's such a pleasure to find someone who isn't afraid to dabble, someone who can share your enthusiasm. Someone like Alexandra Baraitser. Baraitser is an artist - and the reason why the subject of this week's column is looking more gorgeous than ever. You see this picture of the Spanish chair is not a photograph, it's a painting."
Fiona Rattray, The Independent on Sunday, 25th August 2002


"As images, the viewer affords them the same treatment as classic portraits of nobility... Baraitser's use of fluid brush strokes with emphatic light and shade creates active subtexts"
Jane Oriel, The Big Issue (Wales), July 15th-21st 2002


"These larger-than-life paintings signal a new direction, as Baraitser becomes more dependent on the photographic source. She slavishly captures the light in the photograph as it is "trapped" and beautifully frozen on the canvas. But, by the very absence of human presence in all of Alexandra Baraitser's chairs, they begin to entice us with the promise of our own personal narrative."
Rachael Thomas, Curator of Exhibitions, Irish Museum of Modern Art Catalogue for "Mobilia", May 2002


"It's all about identity," says Alexandra Baraitser, the 27-year-old artist behind a series of oil paintings inspired by football shirts. "In so many situations, you either feel you're a part of something or you don't. Football culture is such a great example, because even the shirt is this hugely passionate statement; it's like wearing a flag." Baraitser, [prize winner] in last year's NatWest Art Prize, has chosen many familiar team colours, but to stamp her own identity on such a powerful cultural icon, she has distorted the shapes of the shirts and painted them onto canvases minus the players."
Ria Higgins, Sunday Times Magazine, June 6th 1999


"Her large, dream-like images take Roman ruins, carvings and fountains as their starting point. But they are only a springboard for glistening, fruit-like images that surge up, inexplicably, from the base of the canvas."
Richard Cork, The Times, 17th June 1998.


"Alexandra Baraitser uses objects as source material, re-examining them as a way of thinking about human relationships...Baraitser work[s] with great confidence, playing with paint and image in a manner suggestive of Philip Guston or Julian Schnabel, with Pollock once more the underlying old master"
From the introduction to the catalogue of the NatWest Art Prize 1998, written by Lynn MacRitchie, contributor on contemporary art to the Financial Times.


"For there is another tradition of Young British Artists which is quieter, more thoughtful, and an awful lot more pleasing to look at: more painterly, in a word....The Nat West Art Prize is the most lucrative art award there is...awarded to an artist in recognition of an outstanding group of five works...it is impossible to overestimate the importance of such awards to the working artist."
Genevieve Francon in the Independent on Sunday, 24th May 1998