On view will be impressive examples from the Resonance series and the untitled body of works preceding these paintings which as a group comprise some of Sutil's most compelling statements to date concerning color and the effects of its beauty, magic and mystery.
Resonance
Francisa Sutil’s new paintings will be exhibited at the
Nohra Haime Gallery from
May 9th through June 17th 2007. On view will be impressive examples from
the Resonance series and the untitled body of works preceding these
paintings which as a group comprise some of Sutil’s most compelling
statements to date concerning color and the effects of its beauty, magic and
mystery. One of today’s gifted interpreters of the Minimalism who is
expanding our understanding of primary structures, Sutil has evolved over
the course of the last three decades a tremendously rich vision of
abstraction. Since the late 1990s when she began focusing on a geometric
vocabulary of vertical bands and horizontal striations of color, and
experimenting with the physicality of the picture’s surface, ground and
support through combining pigmented gesso and oil and mounting linen on
wood, Sutil has shown how paintings at a first glance that might appear
"reductive" offer unending interest both in terms of the outstanding formal
features they possess and the deep reservoir of ideas and feelings they
allow us to tap into.
This is indeed the case for the paintings that shall be installed in a
special display designed to showcase their superb construction and the
unique contemplative experience these remarkable luminous objects make
possible. Ranging from squares just under two feet to rectangles of unusual
lengths and proportions like the 15½ inches high Resonance No. 3 which
stretches across more than 12 feet of wall, whether of single or multiple
panels, the paintings with their
glowing reds, yellows, blues, greens and blacks , do, as befitting the
series title, carry tremendous “Resonance”. The emphasis on what Sutil
terms “inner movement” brings out the importance of
rhythm and placement in the arrangement of hues. By repeating a color and
grouping chromatic variations of it in contiguous sequences, the artist is
inviting viewers to see a grouping of say reds and yellows openly not in
terms of any specific given meaning, as she did in the earlier
Transmutations paintings shown at the gallery in 2003 but afresh and in
terms of the deeply personal, that which is known through the screen of
their own experiences and perspectives on art and life.
The Resonance Series was shown in a major retrospective exhibition covering
25 years of Sutil’s career held at the Museo Nacional De Bellas Artes in
Santiago, Chile, in 2006.
Born in Chile in 1952, Sutil moved to New York in 1977 where she completed
her studies of art at the Parsons School of Design, the Whitney Museum of
Art Seminar program and with the M.F.A. she received from the Pratt
Institute in 1981. Since the 1970s Sutil has exhibited widely in Chile and
in New York and other major art centers in the United States and Europe.
She has received numerous grants and awards including a Fellowship from
Southern Methodist University, Dallas, and an NEA grant from the Drawing
Center (Paper Conservation), New York. In 2000 she was commissioned to do a
series of twelve paintings for a private chapel in Santiago de Chile.
Sutil’s work is included in the collection of the National Gallery of Art,
Washington, D.C.; the Jack Blanton Museum at the University of Texas,
Austin; the Vassar College Art Gallery, Poughkeepsie, New York; Museo de
Artes Visuales, Santiago; Museo de Bellas Artes, Santiago; Museo de Bellas
Artes, Caracas; Chase Manhattan Bank, New York and Santiago; O.C. P., Paris,
France; Reader’s Digest, New York; World Bank, Washington, D.C.; IBM,
Santiago; SSC & B Lintas, New York; and the Xerox Corporation, Stamford,
Connecticut, among others.
Nohra Haime Gallery
41 East 57th Street 212 - New York