ART CITIES: N.York-Helen Marden

Helen Marden, Grief XV, 2023, Resin, shells, feathers, and ink on canvas, 25 x 21 1/2 inches (63.5 x 54.6 cm), © Helen Marden/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Photo: Maris Hutchinson, Courtesy the artist and GagosianHelen Marden’s paintings feature a vivid palette informed by her travels to Greece, India, and Morocco. Using resin to bind color-saturated acrylics and raw powdered pigments with found objects such as shells, feathers, and sea glass, she invests the aesthetics and techniques of expressive abstraction with renewed variety and purpose. In both inspiration and her chosen mediums, her paintings are rooted in the natural world while offering a connection to the spiritual realm through conviction and intuition.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Gagosian Gallery Archive

Begun in 2023 as Hellen Marden cared for her husband, Brice, and made over the months following his passing, the “Grief Paintings” are intimately scaled abstractions created with resin, powdered pigment, ink, and natural objects. Flowing layers of vivid color and assemblages of feathers, shells, and sea glass extend beyond the paintings’ circular supports. Imbued with the spirit of life, love, and creativity, this body of work takes on new meaning in accord with the poem “Growing Up in America” by Rene Ricard, a longtime friend of the couple. Hellen Marden was born in 1941 in Pittsburgh and lives and works in New York City; Tivoli, New York; Marrakech, Morocco; and the island of Nevis in the West Indies. She graduated with a BFA in art from Pennsylvania State University in 1963, and then, inspired by Paul Bowles’s translations of storytellers such as Mohamed Mrabet of Tangier, traveled to Europe and Morocco before relocating to New York City. It was in New York that she became interested in the spontaneity and immediacy of the work of artists associated with Tachisme such as Henri Michaux, Jean Fautrier, and A. O. Wolfgang Schulze, as well as in the Abstract Expressionists. In the early 1980s—with the encouragement of other artists such as Jennifer Bartlett, Elizabeth Murray, and Kiki Smith, Marden undertook painting in earnest, maintaining studios in New York and Hydra, Greece. She took part in group exhibitions. In “Tivoli”, Marden’s 2019 debut exhibition at Gagosian, New York, titled after the village where she lives in upstate New York, she showed paintings made with raw powdered pigments layered directly on the canvas and poured resin augmented with acrylic paint. Each work incorporates objects and materials including seashells, beads, and plastic. These expressive investigations into space, object, and color embody experience, emotion, and a natural life force. The organic qualities of the paintings are enhanced by their acidic coloration, through which the grit of postwar abstraction is translated into a contemporary exuberance. “Bitter Light a Year:, her follow-up exhibition in 2021 at Gagosian, New York, featured paintings in which various flotsam and jetsam have been added to biomorphic shapes, again fusing the artificial and the organic. The appended elements—among them are shells purchased from a shop in Provincetown and gathered from the beaches of Nevis, and porcupine quills from a market in Marrakech—follow skeins of paint that suggest a fluid relationship between the two sets of materials. Their shapes hint at biological entities but stop short of figurative representation, and the exhibition’s poetic title suggests a hard-won wisdom. “Agape/Αγάπη”, Marden’s 2023 exhibition at Gagosian in Athens, presents early work painted in her Hydra studio alongside a new series of acrylic and resin paintings that reaffirm her commitment to bold gesture and color. Equally asserted in both her older and newer canvases is the importance of place. While the most recent work was painted in her Tivoli studio, oceanic blues and wine-dark reds recall the Grecian sea- and landscapes that have influenced Marden since her earliest travels. With these experiences in mind, she creates paintings that effectively transport the viewer to distant places as well as to meditative states of being.

Photo: Helen Marden, Grief XV, 2023, Resin, shells, feathers, and ink on canvas, 25 x 21 1/2 inches (63.5 x 54.6 cm), © Helen Marden/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Photo: Maris Hutchinson, Courtesy the artist and Gagosian

Info: Gagosian Gallery, 821 Park Avenue, New York, NY, USA, Duration: 24/7-14/9/2024, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:00-18:00, https://gagosian.com/

Helen Marden, Grief XVI, 2023, Resin, shells, feathers, and ink on canvas, 23 1/2 x 20 inches (59.7 x 50.8 cm), © Helen Marden/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Photo: Maris Hutchinson, Courtesy the artist and Gagosian
Helen Marden, Grief XVI, 2023, Resin, shells, feathers, and ink on canvas, 23 1/2 x 20 inches (59.7 x 50.8 cm), © Helen Marden/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Photo: Maris Hutchinson, Courtesy the artist and Gagosian

 

 

Helen Marden, Grief XX, 2023, Resin, shells, feathers, and ink on canvas, 22 1/2 x 23 1/2 inches (57.2 x 59.7 cm), © Helen Marden/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Photo: Maris Hutchinson, Courtesy the artist and Gagosian
Helen Marden, Grief XX, 2023, Resin, shells, feathers, and ink on canvas, 22 1/2 x 23 1/2 inches (57.2 x 59.7 cm), © Helen Marden/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Photo: Maris Hutchinson, Courtesy the artist and Gagosian