Gerard Mosse "Recent Paintings"

Elga Wimmer PCC

poster for Gerard Mosse "Recent Paintings"

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Gerard Mosse's work was part of a recent group show titled A Matter of Light which was organized around a late 70's light sculpture by Dan Flavin. Elga Wimmer PCC is now pleased to present a solo exhibition of recent paintings and works on paper by Gerard Mosse.

In his essay Incandescence written for this exhibition's brochure, Carter Ratcliff states:

Gerard Mosse creates order. Yet he is not a geometer descended from Mondrian or the Minimalists. Order in his art is a matter of stance, of posture, though his vertical forms are not figurative in any usual sense of the word. Rather than stand, these presences hover. Creating the space they occupy, they invite us to step beyond the frame and join them. Literally speaking, we cannot do that. But nothing in Mosse's art is to be understood literally. His paintings propose a world where all is visual. To see is to enter.

As the dark tones of Mosse's vertical forms give way to lighter ones, they arrive at thin strips of startling brilliance. These horizontal zones are so incandescent that we perceive them as sources of light. It's as if the artist reimagined the chaos of the ancient cosmographers — the dark time before time, when space subsisted as unrealized potential — and then invented forms with the luminous power to dispel chaos. Giving us a primordial sense of time and space, these forms prompt us to recall our earliest attempts to orient ourselves in an intelligible world. When perception is fresh, it feels as if seeing brings the seen into being — to state the case from our point of view. From the viewpoint of Mosse's forms, it could be said that they are made visible by their incandescent desire to be seen. In any case, our response to his paintings has an immediacy that can feel unfamiliar, even disquieting. From the beginning, Western painting sought detachment. Built into our idea of representation is an ideal of objectivity, of impersonal truth. This ideal has no interest for Mosse, nor is representation any part of his aesthetic. As he says, he is an abstract painter. Yet most abstractionists employ representational means, including modeling — the gradation of light and dark tones that endows an outlined form with volume. Mosse does not employ this device, which is remarkable. Since ancient times, commentators have seen it as essential to the art of painting.

In his Natural History, Pliny the Elder credited an Athenian painter named Apollodorus with the invention of skiagraphia — the Greek word for modeling or, in Italian, chiaroscuro. The Natural History was published in the first century of our era, five centuries after the death of Apollodorus, so we can't be sure that Pliny's account is correct. There is no doubt, however, that skiagraphia had a powerful impact when it was new. Painted images were no longer flat outlines on a flat panel. Properly modeled, they “stood out” from the surface, as Pliny said of objects painted by Nicias, one of Apollodorus's immediate successors. We still look for this effect in paintings, non-figurative as well as figurative. Moreover, we associate the effect of volumetric modeling so closely with the very idea of painting that we may not notice that Mosse has dispensed with it. Skigraphia, chiaroscuro, tonal modeling . . . whatever the name, it is absent from his paintings. That is why we do not perceive his forms as objects revealed by a light source. As I have suggested, the forms themselves are the source of light.

At this point, one could argue that Mosse advances a “critique” of Western painting and its devices. The advantage of this argument is that it allows us to assign his art a purpose: to call a long and still active tradition into doubt. But what would be the point of that? There is no sensible reason to cast doubt on the familiar techniques of Western painting. Moreover, “critiques” are the task of critics and theoreticians. As an artist, Mosse does not question what is established. He seeks the new, the previously unimaginable. Moving from dark to bright hues, from blue-violet to red-yellow, he acknowledges the full range of colors, and then leaps beyond color to light. The result is mesmerizing, but — to repeat the inevitable question — what is the point? That, as the artist says, is for the viewer to decide.”

By evoking the full panoply of colors, Mosse symbolizes all of existence. As color becomes light, existence illuminates itself. Matter becomes thought, or so I imagine. Of course, the imagination is restless and the next moment it occurs to me that Mosse intends his vertical forms as symbols of individuals, each one distinctively defined. Thus they are separate. Yet they occupy the same space, for this space is generated by the light — the consciousness — they share. Mosse gives us images of our way of being with one another. Other interpretations are possible. The point is not to insist that one of them is correct but, rather, to stay open to further possibility. Ultimately, this is what makes his art new: its power to inspire inventive responses. Thus he draws us, as creators, into the space he has created.

Media

Schedule

from May 05, 2010 to June 12, 2010

Artist(s)

Gerard Mosse

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