Michelle Charles
dal 6/6/2008 al 26/7/2008
Segnalato da
6/6/2008
Michelle Charles
Kettle's Yard, Cambridge
Her paintings and drawings are concerned with how we look at things and the slippery relationship between what we see and what we remember. Her subjects are single, everyday domestic objects: glasses of milk and empty glasses, bars of soap, scrubbing brushes, tea towels, and knitting.
Kettle's Yard in Cambridge is presenting the first major exhibition in the
UK of Michelle Charles. A British artist, she lived and worked in America
for more than twenty years, exhibiting with the John Weber Gallery, before
returning to London in 2001.
Michelle Charles¹ paintings and drawings are concerned with how we look at
things and the slippery relationship between what we see and what we
remember. Her subjects are single, everyday domestic objects: glasses of
milk and empty glasses, bars of soap, scrubbing brushes, tea towels, and
knitting.
Michelle Charles writes: ŒWhat concerns me is how painting¹s fluidity and
malleability as a medium is able to translate objects into liquid and
translucent states . . . I am particularly interested in the relationship
between vision and memory - what is lost, forgotten or retained.
She works in series. In repeating a motif she explores the possibility of
how we might see the same thing in many ways the way the light falls, the
angle we see the object from, how much attention we pay.
Recent series include drawings of flies and the knitting and unraveling of
wool. Her paintings and drawings combine a deft fluency and economy of
gesture. In the exhibition catalogue, New York art critic Dore Ashton
writes: ŒIt requires great skill, great craft, to reduce an object to its
essence in just a few swift strokes of the brush. Charles succeeds again
and again and again and again.
The catalogue also includes an essay by art critic Guy Brett. He writes:
ŒMichelle Charles has not yet finished exploring all the possible
inflections and subtle nuances that a single, simple object can be invested
with. Or, that could be put the other way round. She has shown and continues
to show us the extraordinary freedom and inventiveness of the brush stroke
that issues from and returns to a single form.
Kettle's Yard
Castle Street - Cambridge