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| Gérard Traquandi, Untitled, 2018 |
Entering the Galerie Laurent Godin in the 13th
arrondissment is like stepping into a Chelsea gallery in the early 1990s. It is
an expansive warehouse space with original floors and structural details.
Currently on exhibition, the recent paintings of Gérard Traquandi, works that
are both sensuous and surprising, both bring the large white walls alive, and
are made even more gorgeous by the atypical for Paris warehouse space.
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| Gérard Traquandi, Untitled 2017 |
Traquandi’s process is unusual and not immediately obvious to the naked eye. He
lays the canvas on the floor and paints an often garishly colored, but diluted
oil background before a second canvas painted in a different color is laid on
top of the first. The impression of the paint on the second canvas is then left
on the first creating abstract unpredictable waves, lines, tears and traces on
the background. Even when the colors are not compatible the dialogue between
them creates something special. The colors and contours of the resultant images
vibrate, glisten and radiate with the changing light that results from our
slightest movement around the space. But the works are not always soothing and
synchronous. Some of them create a sense of agitation as the surface traces of the
second painting are truncated, short and constantly changing direction. At
times, the colors are dark and dense soliciting a melancholic reflection, at
others they are bright and filled with air and light, and carefree.
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Fra Angelico, Annunciation,
St Mark's, Florence |
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| Gérard Traquandi, Untitled, 2018 |
Tranquandi talks of being inspired by Fra Angelico, and
though the connection can take time to discover, the green of a work that
reminds of the sea, and the wind moving across a cloudy sky is almost identical
to the figure foregrounded in the Lamentation
over the Dead Christ. And the dusty, sometimes shimmering orange robe of
the Virgin in Fra Angelico’s Annunciation scene in one of the cells at the St
Mark’s convent in Florence is virtually identical to the surface of one small
Tranquandi work. While the colors and their layered application could easily
remind of unevenly laid concrete, they also visually resemble the layers of color in the
fresco technique. Tranquandi’s ability to take otherwise luminous colors and
make them textured and soft, even though he can never be fully in control of
their appearance on the canvas, at first seems unique. And then, it’s
astounding to go back and recognize the same effect was achieved by Fra
Angelico.
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| Installation View |
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| Floor of the Galerie Laurent Godin |
In the catalogs available to read at the exhibition, there
is much discussion of Tranquandi’s conversation between painting and nature.
Yes, if we stand long enough in front of the paintings we will discover the
sea, a forest, a landscape and water running down an invisible window. However,
to my eyes, the most obvious thing in the world that these paintings relate to
is concrete. The connection and struggle between concrete and abstract painting
covers these canvases. And as if to reinforce my vision of the connection
between the walls of the built environment and the labored application of paint
in layers on a canvas, we start to see the resonance between Tranquandi’s
paintings and the rough uneven surface of the gallery floor. But there is also
tension: the transience and the ephemerality of the vibrant energetic painted
surfaces are in direct contrast to the solidity and permanence of the ground
that we walk on. Then again, as Tranquandi shows us, the floor is as transient
as the art is permanent. And so, these very accessible works encourage us to be
reminded that abstract art is not removed from the world, but is always
interacting with it, enabling us to see from new, different
and deeper perspectives.
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