In the face of nature’s forces, human existence is rendered insignificant - a core idea conveyed by many stories depicting a world without us. When every civilization has collapsed, what remains of Homo sapiens?
Berlin-based artist Lara Bandilla explores this question in her new exhibition On the Road...the exhibition focuses on roads that, after the end of humanity, persist only in collective memory. These roads serve as remnants of what might have been possible. Bandilla dissects a post-apocalyptic world into layers and snapshots. Her works reveal city maps, river paths, star charts, and imaginary spaces, offering a conceptual exploration of a "non-place." Bandilla’s world combines elements of language, surrealism, and the everyday. These elements continuously dissolve and reform, creating a dynamic, everchanging vision. By deconstructing her images into distinct layers, Bandilla invites viewers to reconsider roads and the world from a new perspective.
neues deutschland newspaper
Lara Bandillas paintings narrate of light and movement, of time and space. Reality melts into a fluid dance of impressions, infinity and timelessness.
Delegation of the European Union to the United States, Conversations in Culture
In the light-filled scenes from recent times, different layers overlap...the impression of light and movement is central to the series, in which the painter confronts the viewer with an "alternative reality"... that appears otherworldly... the merging of disparate motifs, the falling lines, the deliberate blurriness, and the dramatic light-dark contrasts make it difficult to locate the scenes... images that evoke film sequences.
Hannah Styrie, Kölner Rundschau
...the Archaics are raw, unpolished, and immediate expressions of feeling. They emerge as pale, almost shadowy figures, drifting into our world to quietly observe its strangeness. Their presence carries an air of detachment, as though they are outsiders gazing upon the familiar with new, unblinking eyes. In their essence, the Archaics reflect reality not as a static image but as a mirror of our relationship with the world around us. Their fleeting, ghostlike existence invites us to consider our perceptions, our interactions, and the emotional truths that lie beneath the surface of what we call the real...
Westdeutsche Zeitung
PENTHESILEA
....a hardrock-opera, no classical staging, modern and up to date...for all senses and Kleist only, that is Penthesilea. In this exhibition Lara Bandilla explores the queen of the Amazons with haunting oilpaintings and sculptures...plastic, metal, bones and varnish symbolize the hardness and odd aggressivity of the character...
Querstrasse - das Kulturmagazin
Lara Bandilla gave Penthesilea a body of iron and a spiritual face. She is a fighter, a female hero, deep of thoughts and grimly. The passionate and torn Penthesilea of Kleist is turned into a thinking- and fightingmachine, lacking only the right and guided will...a young audience appreciates the adamant Penthesilea made of mixed materials...
RADIOkultur Journal
THE TIME OF THE DOGS
...Lara Bandilla delves deeply into the social and political situation of the world, mercilessly reflecting humanity's primal fears. The exhibition "The Time of the Dogs" shows a personal interpretation of the present time. It is a dark interpretation, showing a world that no one wants to see, but that many feel: decaying, destructive, full of loneliness, and threatening... a play with reality, illusion, and dream..