PRESENTATION: Fiona Rae

Over the last thirty years Fiona Rae has produced a distinctive body of work rooted in a conceptual examination of the problems and possibilities of abstract painting. Rae frequently reinvigorates her practice through self-imposed strategic challenges, which have resulted in over fifteen different series of paintings to date. The paintings are improvised directly onto the canvas, establishing painterly and semiotic codes within which each visual element has an equal importance and significance in an inclusive and democratic fictive space.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Centre d’art La Malmaison Archive

Known for their iconoclastic approach to subject matter and formal concerns, Fiona Rae’s paintings incarnate an abstract-pop universe, filled with references to modern and contemporary painting, pop culture, and digital technology. When the border between dream and reality becomes blurred and our senses play tricks on us, our minds start to invent evanescent figures whose forms no longer resemble those of the earthly world. These phantasmagorical forms populate the paintings in the exhibition “Messagère aux diverses couleurs / Many-Colour’d Messenger” by Fiona Rae that are exhibited in Centre d’art La Malmaison. We think we see a crowned queen here, a knight with his sword there, or a fluttering fairy. Rae resurrects our inner child who has fun imagining shapes in a cloudy sky. Is it a woman walking with a bouquet of flowers in her hand that we think we can see in the painting “Figure 2d” or is it a warrior smoking with a grenade at the ready? The artist likes to walk the line between sweetness and violence, laughter and tears, dreams and nightmares. She makes her chimerical characters inhabit radically different universes. From the darkness of the “Greyscale” works to the pastel tones of the 2017–19 paintings. The fleeting feeling of being able to recognise a figure twirling on the canvas soon gives way to the materiality of the painting itself. With the works exhibited in Cannes, painted between 2014 and 2021, Rae examines the imaginative possibilities and extent of abstraction. She explores the boundary between abstraction and figuration, but her choice is perfectly clear: abstraction is the heart of her work. Although they may be momentarily deceived by her insistence on suggesting representation, it is indeed back to the painting itself that viewers are sent. In these series, Rae also examines her relationship with colour. While the Côte d’Azur has been the cradle of great colourists, the painter has no need to envy them. In 2014, for the Greyscale series, she abandoned the colours that had permeated her paintings until then. The bright, almost fluorescent pigments gave way to three tones: black, white and grey. The canvas is no less lively, the painter succeeding in making the restricted palette vibrant. “Figure 1i” is thus incredibly luminous, Rae’s use of the greyscale giving it a vivid strength. In 2015 she reintroduced touches of color, bringing them face to face with stormy skies as in “Figure 2a” and “Figure 2e”. Finally, black disappeared completely, the artist having eliminated it from her palette. Let’s go back to the magic that emanates from Rae’s paintings. Her mastery of pictorial gestures creates a mirage of easy fluency. Like the prima ballerina or acrobat whose apparent effortlessness is a result of their technical skill and virtuosity. Each of Rae’s brushstrokes is conceived by and for itself with the aim to convey an emotion. The artist is meticulous, she understands painting and knows that the creation of a canvas can be colored by the unexpected and the uncertain. Thus, although it may seem that the “Abstract” series leaves much to chance, this is not the case. Gouache and watercolour sketches are used to meticulously prepare the compositions. In Rae’s work, painting is a language, an eminently personal language, and it is through it and through each mark of colour on the canvas that the artist reveals her questions, exclamations and states of mind. In the “Word” series, which comprises the most recent works, letters and words seem to appear on the canvas, attesting to the existence of two distinct languages. By bringing these two communication techniques together, Rae highlights the importance of the expressive dimension of the work, the canvas becoming an intermediary between the artist and the viewer.

Photo: Fiona Rae, Abstract 5 (detail), Oil and acrylic on canvas, 213,5 x 175 cm (84 × 96 in), © Fiona Rae, Courtesy the artist and Centre d’art La Malmaison

Info: Centre d’art La Malmaison,  47 bd de la Croisette,  Cannes, France, Duration: 3/12/2021-24/4/2022, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-13:00 & 14:00-18:00