For her first solo show in London, Xiomara De Oliver presents a body of work that explores alternative worlds and perceptions. Populating her landscapes with multiple scenarios she recreates worlds influenced by her study of history, poetry, journals, novels, biographies and newspaper accounts. Often fragments of text, reflecting thoughts and responses to her source matter, underscore the narrative content. This exhibition, titled 7 Hygienic Memories, presents stories of pleasure, love and hate, desire and punishment.

Paintings such as Courtly Love and Bed Camp for Girls (above) depict idyllic worlds as the inventions of desire. Moments of intimacy between groups of women – dressing each other, posing and waiting – explore the subtleties of romance and courtship. Other works such as Cabin by the Lake are about the conflicts of seduction and a common fantasy that many women can have of being captured or taken. Against a flat blue background two running naked female figures are surrounded by dogs. The dogs become symbols for the chase and the harsher reality of what captivity can entail.

Accounts and stories of, for example, New World explorers and California Gold Rush towns can provide the basis for other series of works. Influenced by the desire of these people to move beyond the boundaries of their reality and search out worlds full of promise that contrasted the actualities they often encountered. De Oliver uses their accounts as points of entry into histories beyond her reach and as points of departure for her own interpretations of the contradictions of expectation.

Other works such as Thinking Mexican reflect on the creation of cultural stereotypes that can be far from the truth yet still effective in sustaining a particular way of seeing. De Oliver uses paint to create hybrid worlds and altered realities. She examines the relationship between fantasy, the imagination and perception in social, historical and personal terms, aware of the realities dreams can escape.

De Oliver will have solo shows at RARE Gallery, NY in May and at Rizziero Arte, Pescara in October 04. She will also be included in a group show in April at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. De Oliver’s first solo show was at RARE Gallery. In 2002. Group shows have included PS1 Studio Artists, PS1 Museum & Contemporary Art Institute, New York; Arts in the Marketplace, Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York; and The Next Wave, Santa Monica Museum of Art, Satellite Gallery, Santa Monica, California. De Oliver is represented by RARE Gallery in New York.