CROSSROADS
Je serais dan le Galerie Octobre Mardi 12 Novembre de 14-19H.
dimanche 10 novembre 2013
samedi 2 novembre 2013
Excerpt from 'Crossroads' written by Francoise Caille
Cantrick, de Cicco, Greene, and Bottrell Cross Paths
The
notion of crossroads, as highlighted by Susan Cantrick, Diane de Cicco, Leslie
Greene, and Susan Bottrell within the framework of the Salon des Réalités
Nouvelles, offers a particularly rich polysemy. On the simplest level, the literal meaning of Crossroads evokes the image of an
intersection, a convergence at a given moment that is not an endpoint, of four
artistic paths crossing each other and beckoning to be followed. It is also a multicultural crossroads,
that of four artistic trajectories that started in the USA, then continued in
France, implying the idea of roads already taken and still to be taken. Yves
Bonnefoy opens his book The Arrière-pays
with these words: "I have often experienced a feeling of anxiety, at
crossroads. At such moments it seems to me that here, or close by, a couple of steps away on the path I didn't
take and which is already receding -- that just over there a more elevated kind of country would open up,
where I might have gone to live and which I've already lost." 1 An artist’s pathway is rarely
linear. Abstract painting, even
less straightforward, is a sort of inner journey, which from time to time
requires taking stock, exposing one’s work to scrutiny by others, exchanging
views with one’s peers. The
encounter of Cantrick, de Cicco, Greene, and Bottrell provides an opportunity
to reflect on the meaning of their respective work and to understand their
position as artists within the sphere of abstraction.
Today,
abstract art is no longer as transgressive as it was during the 20th
century, when each new trend broke with the preceding one. These movements were
closed systems, each one oriented toward a particular approach, depending upon
its own theory and developing its own visual vocabulary. Abstraction, here at
the beginning of the 21st century, is much more fragmented, less
grouped in cliques, less univocal.
The concept of crossroads seems to fully correspond to this state, in
which most current practices are being enriched by those of the past, crossing
each other at various points. This reminds us of Gilles Deleuze’s rhizomatic
thinking, in the sense that contemporary abstraction is a kind of branching
network without dominant currents, where any point of the rhizome can connect with
any other. Such networking leads
to as much multiplicity within the gamut of abstract forms as within any single
practice, as can be seen in the work of these four artists.
Leslie
Greene : two sign systems, two ways of looking at the world
Leslie Greene’s relationship with painting has induced a certain
rapport with the support. The canvas is fixed to a provisory wood panel that is
placed on the floor: it becomes a space into which the artist can plunge and
draw forth her imagery. “The first
moves open up the canvas,” she says -- as one opens a door to another world.
The white surface is animated, and the bird’s eye view is not unlike looking into
a mirror that simultaneously reveals identity and difference. “Oh mirror!” writes Mallarmé3,
“I saw myself in you as a distant shadow,” which Greene herself suggests
in affirming that “painting is a great way for the unconscious to reveal
itself.”
The artist crosses the canvas, walks around it, engages it from
all angles. At first, there is no
top, no bottom, no sides, just a space on the floor defined by the contours of
the chosen format. The physical
relationship is not that of easel painting; it is more mobile and open, also
freer. It assumes, in the first instance, a letting go, an abandonment of the
systematic control of the gesture, without abolishing it altogether.
For Greene, painting is a process of search and discovery, a
withdrawal into self, a psychic tension, a going beyond social reality in order
to give way to images of dreams and the unexpected. Technique comes from
experience. The result is a rich
palette of colors – often contrasting -- and a vast repertoire of forms, from
which two dominant registers emerge: one created by spontaneous gestures,
curved and supple, and the other derived from orthogonal lines. The latter are
produced by drips, the flow of which Greene attempts to master by lifting the
edges of the support (Red-yellow-blue), or simply by applying brushstrokes: in
both cases, the fragility of the line is perceptible. We grasp what the artist calls “the great tension between
the unknown and control,” the risk of the accident and its resultant
uncertainty forever confronting the concern for equilibrium.
Greene’s orthogonal framework forms a textile warp and weft that
give rhythm to the surface while deepening the space; the “weaving” creates
frontal strata with color fields in the background. Certain paintings are like
netted mesh that imprisons the space, partially concealing the underlayers.
They prefigure a system of gestures that Greene is currently exploring: two
pictorial planes in the same painting.
A ground, freely painted, is partially masked by an openwork plane in
the foreground. The latter, which lets in light, sometimes evokes a Moroccan
moucharabieh (Itinerant views), whose purpose is to protect interiors from the sun, to see without
being seen.
The space in Greene’s paintings is constructed through the
interaction of two systems, one based on impulse and the free deployment of
gesture, and the other on a more determined hand, which arrests the gaze. The
background thus appears as the fruit of a primal, irrational interiority, a
baring of profound emotions that the artist attempts to overlay with a more
controlled register. Greene’s
painting is engaged with the desire for self-discovery followed by an impulse
toward self-protection. The result is the expression of the unconscious duality
of what one wants to offer, or not, to the viewer. Here, one of the profound questions of abstract painting is
posed, between the desire to go to the depths of one’s impulses and the limits
imposed on the psychic space because of its exposure. In English, the term
“exhibition” expresses even more than in French the extreme nature of the act.
mercredi 16 octobre 2013
Exposition #74
08-16 novembre 13
Mardi au samedi 14 h - 19 h
Vernissage jeudi 07 novembre13
18 h - 21 hUn nouveau croisement de talents en cette période de crissements :galerie octObre du 8 au 16 novembre, quatre peintres USA-Paris,quatre personnalités picturales et très sensibles,nous offrent l'essence de leur création.Une exposition performance pour s'amuser à compareret comprendre ce qu'est la pratique artistique et où va l'abstraction ;une exposition (renouvelée et itinérante) pour se laisser aller à la peinture.galerie octObre24 rueRené Boulanger75010 ParisRépublique+33608053406
mercredi 9 octobre 2013
mardi 1 octobre 2013
mardi 10 septembre 2013
Salon Realites Nouvelles
Salon des Réalités Nouvelles 2013Parc Floral de Paris22 - 29 septembre 2013 Vernissage Samedi 21 septembre 18h00 - 22h00
Ganesha , 2013, 100cm x 100
cm
Œuvre présentée dans le projet« Crossroads »
de Susan
Bottrell, Susan Cantrick, Diane de Cicco et Leslie Greene
Croisements est une
initiative qui met en lumière certains aspects de l’abstraction contemporaine,
donnant une profondeur de champ au rassemblement diversifié des artistes qui se
croisent au Salon des Réalités Nouvelles. Réunies autour d’une interrogation
portée par l’historienne de l’art Françoise Caille, Susan Cantrick, Diane de
Cicco, Leslie Greene et Susan Bottrell
réaffirment la validité du concept de “réalité nouvelle”, idée
inépuisable par définition. La convergence de ces artistes au
sein du salon dépasse toute frontière nationale ou biculturelle, menant ainsi à
l'enrichissement multiculturel qui est l’un des éléments majeurs propres au
rassemblement. Partant d’une attitude cosmopolite qui embrasse toute la diversité et la complexité du rhizome deleuzien, ces
artistes célèbrent l'éclectisme stimulant des pratiques courantes de l’art
abstrait tout en le situant dans l'hétérarchie des formes de l’art actuel. En
dialogue avec Françoise Caille, elles affirment la valeur de l’abstraction en
tant que ressource vitale et renouvelable à l'infini, tenant résolument sa
place dans l’univers polymorphe des pratiques artistiques contemporaines.
Susan Cantrick
Cantrick, de Cicco, Greene et Bottrell se croisent
La notion de croisements mise en exergue par Susan
Cantrick, Diane de Cicco, Leslie Greene et Susan Bottrell dans le cadre de
Réalités Nouvelles offre une polysémie particulièrement riche. Elle évoque
d’abord, et c’est le sens réel de Crossroads,
l’image d’un point d’intersection, d’une convergence, qui n’est pas une fin,
celle de quatre voies artistiques qui se croisent à un moment donné, avec une
invitation à poursuivre. C’est un croisement multiculturel aussi, celui de
quatre parcours artistiques initiés aux USA, puis menés en France, qui implique
l’idée des chemins d’où l’on vient et ceux que l’on va emprunter. Yves Bonnefoy
ouvrait son livre L’Arrière-pays par
cet incipit : « J’ai souvent éprouvé un sentiment d’inquiétude, à des
carrefours. Il me semble dans ces moments qu’en ce lieu ou presque : là, à
deux pas sur la voie que je n’ai pas prise et dont déjà je m’éloigne, oui,
c’est là que s’ouvrait un pays d’essence plus haute, où j’aurais pu aller vivre
et que désormais j’ai perdu. »1 La route d’un artiste est
rarement linéaire. La peinture abstraite, plus encore, est une sorte de voyage
intime, qui nécessite parfois de faire le point, de s’exposer au regard
d’autrui et d’échanger avec ses pairs. La rencontre de Cantrick, de Cicco,
Greene, et Bottrell constitue, aujourd’hui, un moyen de réfléchir sur le sens
de leurs travaux respectifs, de comprendre leur implication en tant qu’artistes
dans la sphère de l’abstraction.
Aujourd’hui, l’art abstrait
n’est plus transgressif comme il l’a été au cours du XXe siècle où
chaque nouvelle tendance rompait avec la précédente. Les mouvements étaient
alors refermés sur eux-mêmes, chacun orienté vers une démarche, s’appuyant sur
une théorie, développant un vocabulaire plastique interne à chaque groupe.
L'abstraction, en ce début de XXIe siècle, est beaucoup plus
éclatée, moins regroupée en chapelles, moins univoque. Le concept de croisement
semble la caractériser pleinement, car la plupart des pratiques actuelles se
sont enrichies de toutes celles du passé et se situent au carrefour de
plusieurs d’entre elles. Il rejoint la pensée rhizomorphe de Gilles Deleuze, au
sens où l’abstraction actuelle est une forme de réseau ramifié sans courants
dominants, où n’importe quel point du rhizome peut être connecté à un autre.
Cela conduit à une multiplicité tant à l’échelle de toutes les formes
d’abstraction qu’à l’intérieur d’une pratique elle-même, comme le donne à voir
le travail de ces quatre artistes.
Francoise Caille
Francoise Caille
http://realitesnouvelles.blogspot.fr/2012/05/leslie-greene-peintre.html
lundi 9 septembre 2013
Chicago
The Bike Room
Exhibition Detail
Milk and Water . paintings by Katherine Jost and Leslie Greene
1109 W. North Shore Ave.
Chicago, IL 60626 Saturday 28th September - Saturday 26th October
Opening:
Saturday 28th September 16:00 - 19:00 | ||
 Leslie Greene, Soft Circulation |
> QUICK FACTS
|
> DESCRIPTION
The Bike Room is pleased to present Milk and Water, Paintings by Katherine Jost and Leslie Greene. Merging at the confluence of spontaneity and deliberation, each artist rides a current of liquid abstraction. Together, they offer a churning blend as homogenous as oil and water – their trajectories whirlpool in and spew apart, each painter reclaiming bits of debris collected along the way.
Katherine Jost explores a moody range of tainted whites in these new paintings. Images submerge thickly into murky depths. Fluid substances take shape as metaphors, and then dissolve. Some works seem purely abstract; others veil and reveal bobbing forms so illusory that we seek to rediscover them over and over. Viscous smears, at once milk and flesh, shape-shift from a baby’s crown to engorged breasts. Finally, they recede back into unbiased brushstrokes of gesso incised with crayon. Jost delves into a process of subjective association, in which “emotional gaps are impregnated with personal fiction.” She states, “I reference individual experiences which can be perceived as universal, such as conceiving and birthing human life.
Leslie Greene’s quenching watercolors are imbued with the sharp clarity that daylight brings to shallow waters. Crisp broad-stroked patterns are erected and then fractured. Plaids and checks provide scaffolding to organize watery moments of whimsy and negotiation. While Greene’s titles suggest possible allusions – Chemistry, Tuba, Liminal, Ash – the paintings are rigorous abstractions whose material and spatial investigations align, at heart, with Kandinsky’s treatise, Concerning the Spiritual In Art. Greene’s process, like automatic writing, is intuitive. Yet one senses a measured scrutiny that informs each choice – searching for the meaning of a hard or diluted edge, the spatial impact of cut paper or the nuanced saturation of the color yellow.
Katherine Jost, originally from Milwaukee Wisconsin, lives and works in Chicago. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she teaches in the Department of Painting and Drawing, and in the Early College Program. Solo and group shows include the Hyde Park Art Center and the College of DuPage in Chicago, Berliner Liste, Germany, and ArtExhibitionLink in Rome, Italy.
Leslie Greene lives and works in Paris, France. She exhibits internationally, whose venues include Galerie Octobre, in Paris, and Gallery La fabriqueIvry-Sur-Seine. Greene’s work was recently published in a children's book in collaboration with writer Sandra Cisneros.
dimanche 8 septembre 2013
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