ART CITIES:Paris-Georgia Russell
With rhythmically arranged sharp and deep cuts, Georgia Russell transforms existing historical papers of antique books, maps and photographs into impressive expansive objects. Surgery with the scalpel loosens the binding of the book block, changes and redefines the legibility of writing, and fans out the page sequence into flimsy and expressive paper sculptures. These stand in the room or sometimes hang from the ceiling, suggest movement and capture the viewer with their haunting aesthetics.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Galerie Karsten Greve Archive
In her current works, Georgia Russell increasingly turns to painting by editing painted canvases in partly wall-filling formats and arranging them in layers. The color lends the permeable objects a new depth dimension, which – supported by the wavy patterns of patterns – evokes associations with natural phenomena: sea and wind. Georgia Russell presents around 20 previously unseen works in her solo exhibition at Galerie Karsten Greve in Paris. Russell moved to Paris in 2000 after her gaining her Master’s in Printmaking from the Royal College of Art in London. Since 2012, she has been based in Méru, an hour north of Paris. Whilst in Paris, Russell strolled around the second-hand bookstores on the Left Bank. When the title of a book, such as Virginia Woolf’s “The Waves” caught her attention, Russell would purchase it. Back in her studio, she would fan open the book, then begin slicing and cutting the individual pages with a scalpel in order to metamorphose it into a tangled-up sculpture. Her approach to canvases developed from this. “It always surprised me that canvases [in the history of art], apart from those of Lucio Fontana, were flat, I thought, ‘Why can’t we enter inside?’ Then there’s another facade behind that reveals itself. When I cut the canvas, it’s to liberate it and push it elsewhere”. It has only been since 2015 that paper has yielded to canvas; and the artist undertook her current and ever-changing pictorial endeavours. During this new phase, painting has taken centre stage. Whereas in previous works on canvas an iridescent palette blended into complex cut-out work entailing kinetic optical elements. Today, a yearning for simplicity guides the artist’s choices. The paintings have become almost monochromatic, favouring green, blue, grey hues; hinging around various nuances achieved by using highly diluted pictorial materials (acrylic and gouache). A similar wake of simplification seems to have prompted the quasi elimination of any further pieces under Plexiglas, in favour of those set in a metal frame instead – thus establishing a more direct rapport between the piece and the onlooker. Her new cut-out pieces look more pictorial. Similar to architectural styles across the Arab world wherein windows are cut into walls (mashrabiya), the main focus here being the relationship between the whole flat surface of the canvas (opaque and stiff) and the empty spaces made by rhythmical graphic incisions. Similar to a “mashrabiya”, these cutaways transform the canvas into a permeable palimpsest that we may peer into. Moreover, the natural coloration of these paintings plunge them into an atmosphere that has clearly been derived from the natural world. The relationship between indoor-and-outdoor appears reversed: the pieces become plant-like windows; light filtering through, offering glimpses of architecture. For Georgia Russell, nature itself is indeed an everlasting source of inspiration, and she chooses colours that mirror those of her homeland: within her imaginary mindscape, these also reflect her perceptions of nature itself. Ever aware of today’s environmental concerns, the artist does not depict, nonetheless, any of the devastation in our natural surroundings. On the contrary, in fact: she celebrates the very integral essence of these elements, their substantive energy. These new paintings simultaneously embody both the strength, and the fragility, of nature’s perpetual metamorphosis.
Info: Galerie Karsten Greve, 5, rue Debelleyme, Paris, Duration: 14/9-26/10/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-19:00, www.galerie-karsten-greve.com
