ART CITIES:Paris-Un Hiver à Gstaad Paris

The exhibition “Un Hiver à Gstaad Paris” brings together 22 artists from diverse generations and geographies, who demonstrate varying practices within painting. However, the presented works all embody the notion that this medium at the beginning of the 21st Century continues to be both permanent and vital. It is also a blossoming field of practice and research—catalyzed through engaging new ideologies, new contributors and new forms.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Almine Rech Gallery Archive

Co-founder of the Ecart Group (1969) and closely affiliated with the Fluxus movement, John M Armleder has since the end of the 1960’s created a polymorphic body of work which encompasses performance, drawings, sculptures and paintings. Generally characterized by a sense of deep interconnectedness between life and art, and the appropriation of objects and quotes, his work is loaded with a set of influences and references which elude the modernist vernacular as well as any form of classification. The work of Günther Förg encompasses a variety of media from sculpture to painting, ceramics to photography. Although Förg has worked in a variety of techniques and materials, painting remains his most important expressive medium.  He started his career in the 1970s in Munich, where he was influenced by Blinky Palermo and his proclivity for wall painting arose from his interest in architecture, reflected in his turning towards photography. After his early monochromatic paintings, Förg continued to explore modernist themes from postmodern perspectives. Gradually, he achieved a complete command  of color to create space and form, opening up new insights and perspectives in his painting. Madelynn Green utilizes an imaginative balance between abstraction and representation, often referencing the visual language of film photography through the use of blurred lines and light. Green’s recent subjects have included family and social dynamics— primarily those found in nightclubs and crowds as seen in her magnetic painting, “Drinks” (2020).  One value of a contemporary portrait is its ability to reinvent the codes of its own genre. Genesis Tramaine is an expressionist devotional painter who creates abstract portraits of men and women who transcend gender, race, and social structures. Otis Kwame Quaicoe offers a new perspective on African culture through the celebrated form of portraiture. Through his bright and luminous portraits of African men and women, Quaicoe engages with ideas of empowerment, a subject embodied in the postures of his sitters, who appear set against bright monochromatic backgrounds. Genieve Figgis expertly defines her own contemporary language by subverting and reinterpreting classical portraiture through paintings rich in color, texture, and humor. With her portrait titled Grace (2020), depicting the iconic actress Grace Kelly, Figgis strikes a balance between abstraction and figuration, the ancient and contemporary. Marcus Jansen’s ‘Faceless’ portrait series was first painted in 2012 and he continues developing the series today. His characters investigate the secrecy of faceless men in suits, exploring anonymity, power and elitism. César Piette’s work questions the materiality of the image and the nature of painting. His use of traditional techniques—monochromatic layers, perspective, light, composition, and bold use of shadow—connects him to the history of figurative painting. Painted with an airbrush, his images, such as Sunset Landscape, also include three-dimensional effects. Kenny Scharf’s new paintings recall the artist’s painterly vocabulary of stylized aliens in colorful patterns he developed in the 1980s, during which time he became known, together with his close friends Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, as one of the central artists involved in what became known as Street Art. Vaughn Spann has created three new powerful paintings inspired by his personal experiences. He explains them as follows, “I was stopped and frisked for the first time while I was an undergrad student…I was walking home from studying at a friend’s house. Cops pulled me over. Four other cop cars [came] by. They put me against a gate, and my hands are up, split. That same gesture echoes the X. And, for me, that’s such a symbolic form, and so powerful to this contemporary moment, that I formally needed to figure out the components of that”. Foregrounding an interest in the history of portraiture, Chloe Wise examines the multiple channels that lead to the construction of a contemporary self, often through faces of those who are most familiar to her. With her two intimate portraits “Inès in the daytime” and “Inès in the evening” both completed end of 2020, Wise masterly celebrates the heroes of everyday life.

Participating artists: John M Armleder, Agustín Cárdenas, Ha Chong-Hyun, Genieve Figgis, Günther Förg, Madelynn Green, Marcus Jansen, Aaron Johnson, Setsuko Klossowska de Rola, Otis Kwame Quaicoe, Wes Lang, Alexandre Lenoir, César Piette, Kenny Scharf, Vaughn Spann, Vivian Springford, Phyllis Stephens, Genesis Tramaine, Tursic & Mille, De Wain Valentine, Tom Wesselmann and Chloe Wise.

Photo: César Piette, Sunset Landscape, 2020, Acrylic on board, varnished, 95 x 70 cm, 97 x 72 cm (Framed), © César Piette, Courtesy the artist and Almine Rech Gallery

Info: Almine Rech Gallery, 64 Rue de Turenne, Paris, Duration: 6-27/2/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.alminerech.com