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Christopher French New Paintings: "Inventions and Recollections" March 19 - April 30, 2011 reception for the artist: Saturday, April 2, 3:00 - 5:00 pm  Recent review of this exhibition Christopher French Marsha Mateyka Washington, D.C. by Rex Weil ARTnews, June 2011, p 116 Christopher French makes paintings that are abstractions in the fullest sense. He records and distills the brilliant palette of nature and makes it intelligible without dampening its inherent mystery. These new works are based on the landscape in and around Water Mill, New York, where French (an ARTnews contributor) moved three years ago. Remains of the Day, July 7, 2010 is a chart of thickly painted stenciled circles, each reproducing a color observed on the day specified. Pinks, coppers, crimsons, blues, and shadowy grays on a yellow background suggest surfaces lit by sunset. The work is painted on Braille paper mounted on linen, a device that French has long employed. French’s dots fill the paper’s tactile grid, creating a vocabulary of color. Since the paper is designed for the visually impaired, a reminder emerges about the limits of human perception. However, French’s composition is specifically calibrated for our sensory pleasure. Tracing the Colors of the Sky (2010) features a different, more difficult compositional element. The Braille grid is gone and the painting is mainly composed of squiggles, the shape of which French borrowed from the top of the “T” in the New York Times nameplate. A tightly woven pattern of these sinuous figures in gentle atmospheric tints is punctuated by a few acid-pink dots, which impart a surprising sense of flux. 
A new series of works on paper that
French calls “floral prototypes,” bearing
such inscrutable names as Dotty Mycropsia
(2010), shows amalgamations of real
flora. Here, the artist varies his application
and choice of materials, from washy
watercolor backgrounds to scumbled
petal flesh and incised filaments pressed
into the paper. With these paintings
French underscores his commitment to
the careful notation of nature’s infinite
variety.
--Rex Weil
New Paintings: "Inventions and Recollections" |
