Mary Gilkerson: August 2008

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

The Line According To: August 29- September 9, 2008

To view works by Mary Gilkerson in this exhibition click HERE.

Three Rivers Variation VI, 2008

Monotype

19 x 15 in

$475

if ART

presents at

Gallery 80808/Vista Studios

808 Lady St., Columbia, S.C.

THE LINE ACCORDING TO

Roland Albert – Mary Gilkerson – Sjaak Korsten

Kees Salentijn

August 29 – September 9, 2008

Artists’ Reception: Friday, August 29, 2008, 5 – 10 p.m.

Opening Hours:

Saturdays, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Sundays, 1 – 5 p.m.

Weekdays, 11 a.m. – 7 p.m. and by appointment

For more information, contact Wim Roefs at if ART:

(803) 238-2351/255-0068 – wimroefs@sc.twcbc.com

For its August – September exhibition, if ART presents at Gallery 80808/Vista Studios The Line According to Roland Albert, Mary Gilkerson, Sjaak Korsten & Kees Salentijn. German artist Albert will present mixed media, mostly wood-based sculptures, and Columbia’s Gilkerson, a new series of monotypes. Dutch painter Salentijn will show paintings, mixed media works on paper, painted ceramic plates, lithographs and silkscreens. Korsten, another Dutch artist, will show mixed media works on paper. Korsten has recently joined if ART Gallery, and the upcoming exhibition will be his first in the United States.

Albert (b. 1944) is a widely respected painter and sculptor in Germany. He is part of the artists’ exchange between Columbia and its German sister city of Kaiserslautern. Albert studied with the famous Greek-American sculptor Kosta Alex in Paris in 1964. In 1970, he graduated from the prestigious Munich Academy of Fine Arts. Albert’s work overall fits European post-World War II contemporary traditions. He shares Joseph Beuys’ love for rough and unfinished materials. Like Art Informel artists such as Spaniard Antoni Tapies and fellow German Emil Schumacher, Albert considers not just forms and shapes important but also the tactile and physical quality of his materials.

Gilkerson (b. 1958) has recently completed monotypes for her Three River series based on Columbia’s Congaree, Saluda and Broad rivers. The sometimes strongly abstracted works are based on photos and drawings Gilkerson made earlier this year during walks along the riverbanks. Gilkerson for many years has been prominent on the art scene of the South Carolina Midlands as an artist, critic and curator. She teaches art at Columbia College in her hometown of Columbia. Gilkerson holds BFA, MA and MFA degrees from the University of South Carolina.

Korsten (b. 1957) is widely known and respected in the Netherlands. Not unlike Albert, he works in established post-World War II European modern and contemporary traditions. His work is related to Art Informel artists such as Tapies, Jaap Wagemaker, Wols, Jean Fautrier and Manalo Millares. Much of the focus in their work and that of Korsten is on materials and surface. While Korsten’s work is heavily abstracted, he typically includes representative elements. Korsten’s work has been shown at major European fairs, including TEFAF Maastricht, PAN Amsterdam and the Cologne Art Fair.

Salentijn (b. 1947) is among The Netherlands’ most prominent painters. The initial inspiration leading to his mature style came from post-war American art and from Spanish painters such as Tapies, Antonio Saura, and later Millares. Salentijn developed a personal style that combined the expressionist, painterly swath with smaller but equally expressionist marks that are quick and slightly nervous but sure. Combining vigorous painting with often-childlike imagery, Salentijn’s work eventually placed him in the Northern European, post-war CoBrA tradition of strongly expressionist, abstracted art that containes representational elements. Salentijn’s increased use of figuration in the 1990s confirmed this link. His work is in several European museums. In addition to the 1982 Chicago Art Fair, his work has been represented at major European art fairs, including Art Fair Basel, TEFAF Maastricht, Kunstmesse Cologne and KunstRAI Amsterdam.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Essay: Mary Gilkerson

Three Rivers Variation VII, 2008

Monotype

19 x 15 in

$475

MARY GILKERSON

By Wim Roefs

The vast majority of Mary Gilkerson’s works in the current exhibition are recent monotypes from her Three Rivers project. Still, one of the most telling pieces might be her one oil painting in the show, the large, recently completed Edisto River I. The painting shows the profound influence that Gilkerson’s exploration of the monotype medium in recent years has had on her approach as a painter.

In short, making monotypes has made Gilkerson a looser painter. Monotype is a painterly print medium in which the artist paints with printer’s ink on a glass or Plexiglass plate. The painted plate then is covered with a sheet of paper and both are run through a press, transferring the ink to the paper, creating one unique print. Among the characteristics of monotypes is the visibility of brush strokes or other marks in the print. They make the works look somewhat like paintings, albeit without much literal texture.

But a crucial difference between painting and creating monotypes is the time it takes normally to complete a work. While paintings can take days, weeks, months, even years, monotypes have to be created in a few hours tops. They have to be completed before the ink dries on the plate, and many a monotype takes less than an hour. This circumstance creates a mindset geared toward deliberate but speedy execution rather than the contemplative, back-and-forth, layered approach of painting. It forces the artist to rely on talent and experience, diving into the work and getting out before too much second-guessing interferes with the process.

The short execution time and resulting need for speed with monotypes usually prevents artists from getting too tight. It encourages artists who might typically have problems accepting a painting as finished to do more with less. That results in more loosely rendered imagery. In the case of precise, perfectionist, literal, hesitant or simply slow painters, the monotype mindset not seldom carries over in the way they paint, adding a new approach to their way of working.

Since she began exploring monotypes in 2005, many of Gilkerson’s paintings have become decidedly looser. Edisto River I is a magnificent example of where her more liberated approach can lead. Gilkerson’s current Three Rivers monotypes also suggest that this liberation has allowed her to be less literal in her renderings. The recent monotypes are based on the three rivers running through her hometown, Columbia, S.C., which Gilkerson sketched, photographed and observed for on a weekly basis for months in preparation for the monotypes.

While renderings of nature, the new monotypes are at times highly abstracted, characterized by sweeping shapes, lines, the intersection of lines and the skewed grids the lines create. Some of the works have strong geometric qualities or juxtapose geometric and organic shapes. As a body, the work also explores the effect of light, atmosphere, weather and the passage of time on nature’s formal elements. The works are, Gilkerson says, “intuitive and abstracted responses to the intersection of the rivers with the urban environment.”

Thursday, August 7, 2008

EXHIBITION PREVIEW

Preview of Mary Gilkerson's work in if ART Gallery's August 29- September 9, 2008 exhibition The Line According To Albert, Gilkerson, Korsten, and Salentijn at Gallery 80808/Vista Studios, 808 Lady Street, Columbia, SC.