Alex Katz, Mondes Flottants, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin

 

Alex Katz, Floating Worlds, Installation

Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin

I have never been a big Alex Katz fan. I know that he's an important 20th century painter, and that the high society women in sometimes gaudy colours are sophisticated critiques of capitalism and the art market. But, there's something about the hyperrealism that I find off putting. The works in current exhibition at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac's Pantin space are, however, a different story. The paintings of water of different types, in different states are mesmerizing, even when they are painted in glaring blues and greens.

Alex Katz, Hommage to Monet, 5, 2009

A few of the works in the exhibition include people. I couldn't help notice how the human figures interrupt the cool, flow of the water. The human disturbs the expanse of blue that is nature's existence. Even though Katz painted these reflective works a decade ago, I was struck by their resonance with today's alerts for our devastation of the environment. In works such as People (2012) featuring people, the bathers horizontally dissect the water, interrupting, the figures seemingly conversing, playing, bathing, create a wave around them. The peaceful aqua blue of the sea is forced to change direction, lap around them.

Alex Katz, Reflection with Lilies, 2010

The paintings are also about reflection, about light as it dances across the surface of the water, and in this, the water, comes together with paint. The sea and painting have been partners in exploration of the limits of what we see and know. For centuries, artists have used the sea as a way to move beyond the human world, and in Katz's works that push is found at the limits of abstraction. Abstraction enabled through the marriage of paint, blue, water and light is brought to the fore of the paintings. Without depth and sometimes without any articulation of orientation or definition of space, we are left looking at the flow of paint that is the flow of the water.

Alex Katz, People, 2012

Another thing that is striking about these works is that we often don't know whether we are looking down at the water, across it. We lose orientation, in space as well as time: is that the moon shining on a night sky reflected in the water? Is it a grey day and raining? Is that a sea covered in mist? Is it a reflection, upside down in a lake? The intrigue and ambiguity of what we see in the image contributes to its oscillation between abstract and figurative. Again, the ambiguity like the abstraction comes in their bringing together of water, paint, perspective and light bounding around the canvas, reflecting and refracting off the water.

Alex katz, Wave 4, 2000

Ultimately, these works are more personal, more intimate, more reflective than anything else I have seen by Katz. And in the oasis that is Thaddaeus Ropac's Pantin gallery, housed in a renovated 19th century red-brick boiler house - its xenethal lighting makes the experience one of a calm, cool summer afternoon, far away from the noise and pollution of the city