Zhang Wei @ Galerie Max Hetzler

I visited this exhibition months ago. When Paris shut down to stop the spread of the Coronavirus, these fresh and vibrant paintings representing the first exhibition of Chinese artist, Zhang Wei were shuttered inside Galerie Max Hetzler for the remainder of the Spring. As often happens with abstract painting, the images in representation don't begin to show the complexity of what the painter is doing on the canvas, and so I lost all motivation to post this blog.

Both in their size and their often sometimes aggressive approach to the canvas, these abstract paintings are highly unusual for a Chinese artist. The application of paint is varied and contrasting even on a single canvas. The artist moves from sweeping paint across a canvas through splashing to delicate touching. The gallery blurb mentions that the works are influenced by action painting, and there is also a clear influence of the painting of Americans such as Franz Kline. However, there are also strong connections to the calligraphic mark, a trait developed from eastern traditions. It is as though east and west meet in the traces of the calligraphic made into paint. And with these different techniques come unlikely combinations of paint. Purple and orange, pink and green share space on the same canvases. It is typical for the colour that takes up most of the canvas to be applied through a huge swathe pulled across and around. In contrast, the other colour is like a visitor to the canvas, splashed on, an afterthought, something not meant to be there. Like the unusual mint green in the smaller work on paper, we are left wondering how the dashes and splashes ended up on the canvas.

There are also moments in these paintings that are filled with such enormous energy and vibrancy in these daring colours, giving the impression that the paint ended up on the canvas as the result of an explosion. The paint moves in multiple directions, often frenzied, and yet, always with purpose. In other moments, it is tipped onto the canvas, flicked on. It has an alarming sense of speed, immediacy, as though not a lot of thought has gone into it. The gallery text also likens  Zhang Wei's paint to breath; light, airy, gentle. In some paintings, I also noticed water splashing, and in other works there was something in motion that couldn't be seen by the human eye. Thus, the paintings are both real and mysterious.

There is a conversation between the different colours. A yellow in standoff with splashes of purple, the inclusion of grey into a field of yellow. The colours never sit comfortably together, although sometimes there is a sense of resignation, as though they have given up their argument and decided to sit together calmly.

The gallery blurb also says that the works are explorations of the canvas as space, and that because the colours don't cover all the space on offer, the works can be unfinished. However, to my eyes, there was nothing unfinished about Zhang Wei's paintings. Rather, the vivacious colours have been deliberately placed in their space on the canvas. The consciousness of emptiness is confirmed by the dense white layer of paint over a thick hessian canvas in those areas identified as empty. Indeed, white is everywhere in these works, as though white is the retort to any attempt to make assumptions about the consistency of colour, their relationships and their status on the canvas.

Sarah Moon @ Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris

Sarah Moon, le Langage des Cygnes, 2000

The Sarah Moon exhibition at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris received great reviews. However, I have to admit, I came away slightly disappointed by the exhibition. I didn't think that it explored the depth and complexity of Moon's photography, preferring to highlight the aesthetic beauty. From the point of view of display, I found that works were too tightly hung. Not only was it not possible to social distance inside the spaces, but the proximity of one image to the next made viewing a challenge. The narrative of the exhibition followed the poetic and ethereal strands of Moon's photography. Overall, there is a dark melancholy hovering over the photographs as an oeuvre. While, the darkness and bleakness of Moon's vision made for some unsettling viewing, the exhibition ignored this aspect of the work. 

Sarah Moon, La Mouette, 1998

In addition, perhaps the most interesting aspect of Moon's fashion photography is an eschewal of the eroticism and objectness of the model's body. Moon's photographs reduce the body to a form, sometimes no more than a mould for clothes. In the most extreme examples, the body or figure is a shadow. Moon achieves this through what appears to be a deft handling of light and shadow as well as an instinct for the visuals. The human forms are then placed next to birds in flight, at rest, in reflection. In such series, photographs that began as fashion images become about the shape of clothes, their proximity to nature, imitation of animals, birds and flowers. In this, they are haunting, opening out to the continuities between human and animal as well as between bodies in motion and memory. 

Sarah Moon, En Roue Libre, 2001

The exhibition makes multiple references to Moon's interest in time, But again, there seems to be much more going on that a bringing of the past into the present. The photographs show an opening out of time. The camera is able to confuse between past and present, creating a timelessness that, as such, insists that time is in constant flow. Moon's photographs wear the camera's ability to bring disparate times together on their surface, just at the fashion world manipulates of form into something that is both timeless and ephemeral. I didn't think this play with time, particularly as it related to the subject matter was explored by the exhibition.

Sarah Moon, For Yohji Yamamoto, 1996

Lastly, there was nothing about the technology used by Moon to create her unique images. Moon uses Polaroid negatives which are not developed immediately, therefore attracting scratches, spots, dirt and other markings that appear like distress to the surface of the image. Presumably, she also uses filters, but this is not mentioned. Perhaps the most unique aspect of the image is the appearance of Moon's brushing of the photographic print with varnish or a lacquer of some description, heightening the blur and sense of mystery. This also reminds of early glass plate photography and the search to define the new medium in its relationship to painting. Here, in Moon's photographs with the manipulation of the surface, it is as though she is literally painting on the image, bringing the two media together in the single frame. 

Gideon Rubin, A Stranger's Hand @ Karsten Greve

Gideon Rubin, Six Girls in Uniform, 2019

I didn't know Gideon Rubin's work before seeing this exhibition at Galerie Karsten Greve yesterday. Face to face with the anonymized generic figures, often identified for their métier rather than their person, my first thought was: Luc Tuymans. Like the Belgian artist, Rubin's anonymous figures have the appearance of being hastily painted. A few thick brushstrokes later, they appear on the canvas as troubled and tension-filled figures speaking a greater truth than their own being.

Gideon Rubin, Untitled, 2020

The flyer accompanying the exhibition claims that their faces have been erased. However, as I see them, they have been painted over. To me there is a difference. On these figures, we see that there was once a face, but that a brushstroke now covers over the features. The stroke is always made in a skin tone slightly lighter or slightly darker than the one underneath, thus consciously announcing, "this face is being covered over." The eyes mouth and nose are not brushed away, but they are swept under the carpet, so to speak. As a result, there is a hint that the identity is still there, underneath the hastily added swathe of paint. It has not been removed.

Gideon Rubin, Nurse, 2020

Without any knowledge of Rubin's process, his turn to photographs and cinematic images as inspiration, I was struck by the heterosexuality of the world he creates. The paintings are populated by white heterosexual figures: couples, families, and in one image which is disturbing for its hackneyed obviousness, a man in a suit stands behind a desk looking down at a naked woman slouched in a chair. The painting is titled The Office  2020. The Six Girls in Uniform , 2019 and Seven Girls in Uniform, 2019, images in which there is no sight of men is also as heterosexual as they come. The image shows the women with their heads bowed, standing like school children or employees, lined up to be spoken to, punished. It is an image pervaded by the generic presence of men scolding women. The flyer accompanying the exhibition talks about how the particularities of the identities are removed. While it is true that individuality is difficult to discern, identity is clear: these are white working women under the sway of a patriarchal society. 

Gideon Rubin, The Office, 2020

Unlike Luc Tuymans, although Rubin begins with the photograph, there's no way to identify the source. In fact, it wasn't until I read the catalogue that I learned that some of the works began as photographs of Nazi soldiers. With the insignia that gave them their power "removed" from the image, their power is supposedly neutralized. However, I suspect that the insignia might be covered over rather than removed. And, Nazis decorated or not, the paintings represent men with power. The works are not about the photograph in the way that they are for Tuymans. Rubin's paintings don't speak to the reproduction of images, the processes of the image world, its dangers and violations in the way that Tuymans does. Or at least, if they do, the critique of images is different. Power is everywhere apparent, but it is in the pose of the men - relaxed, chest open, legs casually crossed, confident. While women repeatedly have their hands at the their sides, and posed to suggest entrapment. Even Nurse, 2020 has the feeling of a deer in a headlight. Her head is turned to confront the viewer, enveloped in red, surprised that she is being watched. If the women are not being scolded by men, they are uncomfortable, nervous, self-conscious. 

Gideon Rubin, Fourth Avenue, 2019

If Tuymans creates tension and conflict between identity and the representation of that identity, Rubin is painting power. To reiterate, this is a white, heterosexual power shining a light on the awkwardness of social relations and its expression between men and women. The sadism of men and the reticence of women makes Gideon's paintings unsettling. I was surprised at how much emotion the works stirred up in me, particularly, my anger towards the artist. I kept wanting to ask, "does he know what he is doing?" As if he didn't know!