Gabriele Evertz “Path”

Minus Space

[Image: Gabriele Evertz "Intervention / Summer" (2022) Acrylic on canvas over wood, 72 x 72 in.]

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MINUS SPACE presents Gabriele Evertz: Path, a solo exhibition of new, large-format color paintings by the Brooklyn-based artist. This is the artist’s fourth solo exhibition at the gallery.

Gabriele Evertz’s new paintings originated at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020 as she responded to and reflected upon the notions of restriction, adversity, distress, and sorrow. She asked herself the question – “what to do now?” – and concluded that our moment called for continuity in the studio, but to also define a new reality in her paintings.

In her new artworks presented in Path, this called for the expansion of her traditionally vibrant palette of prismatic colors to now include low-intensity earth tones for the first time, which according to the artist, “release a quiet light, bringing with it a sense of tranquility that is reminiscent of a world softened by shadows.” The Latin root word for shadow is “ombra” and Evertz explored the complete range of umber and ochre pigments which are among the oldest materials used by artists. Evertz states, “When the pandemic hit, I couldn’t use these bright, joyful colors anymore and I looked to the prehistoric palette, the earth colors…to express strength, to share the strength that color can give to the viewer…and it connected me to the first artists.”

Evertz’s expanded palette continues to achieve a high degree of luminosity, which appears to the viewer as though her paintings exude a kind of radiant, internal light. When color is presented in the form of the artist’s signature configuration of vertical and diagonal stripes, “the form disappears and the color comes forward”, taking the viewer into the space of a painting. “The stripe is recognized at a different level in your mind than the color. Color has a deeper recognition and enters emotion at a deeper level than the stripe does.”, states the artist.

Her new paintings are also deliberately large in format, scaled to 6 by 6 feet / 183 x 183 cm. She asserts, “Color can’t function when it’s small. It’s a physical relationship to the work. Painting has to be at least as tall as you are in order to challenge you, to invite you in, and to ask questions.”

Evertz summarizes, “Scientists tell you that in nature light makes the color, but a painter will tell you that colors make light…I’m not painting with light. I’m painting with colors. And colors make light in the painting…For me the beauty is to grasp the power and aliveness of color. It bestows a sense of strength that brings us together as a community. This is my new expectation of art.”