Galerie Jaeger Bucher presents a solo show by the American artist Pat Steir, born in Newark, New Jersey. Since her first exposition in New York in 1964 at the gallery Terri Dintenfass, Pat Steir has created a broad spectrum of paintings all born from her pouring technique which has been refined to the point of virtuosity : layers of paintings placed as successive veils whose meditative silence is reminiscent of Agnes Martin pictorial space. Open through January 8, 2011.
The art of Pat Steir resides in the delicately equilibrated interplay between the force of gravity and the properties of the paint, for its quantity, consistency and substance determine the fragile oscillation between deliberate control and chance occurrence. With this technique, Pat Steir works with what she calls herself the “nature of painting” and uses her body as a Kyudo arch or as a compass in order to better express the work from a central axis, an internal center from which a lived experience gives birth to spatialisation.
Her work is inspired by a profound interest in Renaissance Painting – some of her canvases recall the dazzling colors or magnificent golds of sublime works by Fra Angelico, Lippi or Giotto. Also she has great knowledge of Abstract Expressionism, Chinese paintings from the Tang & Song Dynasty, as well as skills of “Yi-pin” techniques of “ink-splashing” from the 8th and 9tth century where free-form ink splatterings created abstract forms evocative of freedom and perfect control of the material. The ten recent paintings gathered in the exhibition create a radiant and mystical beauty which evokes a silence close to the Origin, the “zero point” where everything started.
A bilingual catalogue will be published for the exhibition with color images and a text by art historian and critic Doris von Drathen.
The work of the artist has been presented in numerous group shows, such as Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (2010), ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany (2006), Whitney Museum, New York (2004) or Des Moines Art Center, Iowa (2003). Pat Steir’s paintings have entered many public collections, such as : MoMA, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, The National Gallery of Art, Washington and the Tate Gallery, London amongst others.
Image: Pat Steir Two Golds, 2009-2010 Oil on Canvas 84 x 84 inches
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