Metalpoint Paintings and Drawings Over the Past Ten Years, Susan Schwalb Has Employed a Red
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Music of Silence: Metalpoint Paintings and Drawings Over the past ten years, Susan Schwalb has employed a red. Pale expanses of green and blue repeatedly traversed spare, minimal vocabulary of horizontal lines and bands, by undulating horizontal lines may recall moonlight reflected drawn across layered fields of color, to create several on the ocean near the New England shore in the triptych remarkably resonant and nuanced series of paintings and Soundings (2007). The sun and heat of the southwest drawings. In contrast to the cool geometry of conventional seems to animate the painting 7:55 PM (2007) in which a Minimalism, the artist’s work, based on process and the saturated ochre field is injected with deep reds and vibrating handmade, evoking nature and natural phenomena, pinks at the horizon to describe a tremulous twilight. In repetition and time, perception and individual experience, these works, and others, the artist recalls aspects of the suggests a feminist approach to modernism. Though natural world in simple, poetic, often sensual terms. essentially abstract in form Schwalb’s work, small-scaled The series’ title, the Music of Silence, adapted from a poem and intimate, refers to the real world. by Stéphane Mallarmé, refers to another source of inspiration The artist claims to “find the work” through the process and for the artist. The gentle rhythms of her modulated silverpoint materials of its making. She begins by applying three or bands, and evocation of sound waves in her wavering four layers of acrylic wash to a gessoed wood panel to colored lines, suggest an affinity with music, as does produce a smooth surface which she breaks by sanding in the language she chooses to describe the “echoes” or lines, marks, or incisions, revealing various colors beneath. “reverberations” of her work. It is interesting to note that her At various moments she introduces silverpoint, a medium husband, Martin Boykan, is an accomplished composer and the artist has used for over thirty years but has recently pianist, and author of a book of essays on music titled employed in new and unconventional ways. Instead of using Silence and Slow Time. a metal stylus to draw a fine, figurative line, in the tradition Like the best abstract painting, Schwalb’s work transcends of such precursors as Albrecht Dürer and Leonardo da technique and materials and aspires to the sublime. It is SUSAN SCHWALB Vinci, Schwalb rubs thin pieces of metal across her paintings easy to lose oneself in her contemplative, quietly expressive Music of Silence: leaving softly-toned, horizontal bands of silver, or in some work, and emerge richer for the experience. Metalpoint Paintings and Drawings cases gold, copper, or bronze, on their surface. The finished work, at once layered and luminous, alludes to the earth’s Tuesday, April 15 to Helaine Posner, New York strata, as the title of an earlier series attests, while appearing Saturday, May 31, 2008 to shimmer before our eyes. HELAINE POSNER is an independent curator and writer living in New York. Galerie Mourlot From 1991-98, she was curator of the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Elusive things, such as remembered color and the quality of 16 East 79th Street MA. Posner is curator of the first mid-career survey of the work of Lorna New York NY 10075 light, suffuse the artist’s paintings and capture a sense of Simpson organized by the AFA which traveled to the Museum of Contemporary the places she has lived and worked. In Music of Silence I Art, Los Angeles, the Miami Art Museum, and the Whitney Museum of 212 288 8808 American Art, New York in 2006-2007. She is the author of a monograph on [email protected] (2006), Schwalb conveys the cool, grey light of winter in the the artist Kiki Smith (The Monacelli Press, 2005) and co-author of After the www.galeriemourlot.com northeast through silvery tones marked by subtle traces of Revolution: Women Who Transformed Contemporary Art (Prestel, 2007). Music of Silence V 2007 silverpoint, acrylic on wood 24 x 24 x 2 inches Music of Silence IV 2007 silverpoint, acrylic on wood 24 x 24 x 2 inches Echoes Redoubled 2007 diptych silverpoint, acrylic on museum mount board on wood 30 x 63 x 2 inches Facing page: right panel Music of Silence I 2007 silverpoint, acrylic on wood 24 x 24 x 2 inches Music of Silence VI 2007 silverpoint, acrylic on wood 24 x 24 x 2 inches Soundings 2007 triptych silverpoint, acrylic on wood 16 x 52 x 1.5 inches Facing page: right panel 7:55 pm 2007 silverpoint, acrylic on wood 24 x 24 x 2 inches Strata #452 Strata #445 2007 silverpoint, goldpoint on red Plike paper 18 x 18 inches 2007 silverpoint, copperpoint, brasspoint on black Plike paper 12 x 12 inches GROUP EXHIBITIONS (SELECTED) 2008 Soprafina Gallery, Boston MA Equilibrium: Susan Schwalb & Nan Tull OK Harris Gallery, New York, NY Abstraction/Color 2007 Gráficas Gallery, Tucson, NM Control/Chance: Susan Schwalb, Valerie Constantino & Rainer Gross Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery, Keene College, NH In Residence: Artists and the MacDowell Colony Experience (tour: The Art Gallery, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH) EDUCATION G.A.S.P. Gallery Artists Studio Projects, Brookline, MA Abstraction Updated: Deborah Muirhead, Susan Schwalb & Suzanne Volmer BFA Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA Michele Mosko Fine Art, Denver, CO Red, Black and Red, All Over High School of Music and Art, New York, NY 2006 Kentler International Drawing Space, Brooklyn, NY Figure/Ground Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, WV Never Done: Works by Women Artists from the Puzzuoli Miller Collection SOLO EXHIBITIONS (SELECTED) Solomon Fine Art, Seattle, WA Words to Live By District of Columbia Art Center, Washington, DC From Sea to Shining Sea 2008 Galerie Mourlot, NYC Music of Silence: Recent Metalpoint Paintings and Drawings Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah, GA The Luster of Silver: Contemporary Metalpoint Drawings 2006 Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA Metalpoint Paintings 2005 Erie Art Museum, Erie, PA Boundaries: Book Arts Between the Traditional and the Experimental Winfisky Gallery, Salem State College, Salem, MA Atmospheric Disturbances 2004 Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR National Drawing Invitational Simon Gallery, Morristown, NJ Atmospheric Disturbances Danforth Museum of Art, Framingham, MA New Faces: New Visions 2005 Solomon Fine Art, Seattle, WA Shards of Memory: Recent Metalpoint Paintings The Art Store, Charleston, WV Drawing Invitational Robert Steele Gallery, NYC Drawn in Metal 2003 National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC Insomnia: Landscapes of the Night 2004 Cervini Haas Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ Red Mesa Brad Cooper Gallery, Tampa, FL Visions of Passage 2002 Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, MA A Nation Mourns & Artists Respond 2003 Robert Steele Gallery, NYC Afterimage: Recent Metalpoint Paintings and Drawings Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX Recent Acquisitions Simon Gallery, Morristown, NJ Recent Metalpoint Paintings and Drawings Kenise Barnes Fine Art, Larchmont, NY Ordinate/Coordinate Let There Be Light 2002 Adair Margo Gallery, El Paso, TX Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, CA Recent Acquisitions of Contemporary Works on Paper, Cervini Haas Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ Palimpsest: Recent Metalpoint Paintings Part Two: Everywhere but California 2001 M.Y. Art Prospects, NYC Palimpsest: Recent Metalpoint Paintings 2001 Dorsky Gallery, NYC At the Edge: The Horizon Line in Contemporary Art 1999 Andrea Marquit Fine Arts, Boston, MA Moments of Resonance: Recent Metalpoint Drawings and Paintings Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL Burn: Artists Play with Fire 1998 Birke Art Gallery, Marshall University, Huntington, WV Improvisations on Jim Kempner Fine Arts, NYC Minimalennialism Outer Space: Recent Metallic Works on Paper 2000 The Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA Visual Memoirs: Selected Paintings and Drawings 1997 Arthur B. Mazmanian Art Gallery, Framingham State College, Framingham, MA Improvisations on Outer Space: The Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA A Decade of Collecting: Recent Acquisitions of Prints and Drawings Recent Metallic Paintings and Silverpoint Drawings 2000-01 College of Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM Jewish Artists: On the Edge Hebrew Union College, NYC Living in the Moment: Contemporary Artists Celebrate Jewish Time 1996 Andrea Marquit Fine Arts, Boston, MA Galaxies & Other Matter: Recent Metallic Paintings 1999 Fuller Museum of Art, Brockton, MA Ninth Triennial Watson Gallery, Wheaton College, Norton, MA Intervals: Silverpoint Paintings 1998 Margaret Thatcher Projects, NYC Vibration Silverpoint Drawings 1994 American Cultural Center, Jerusalem, Israel The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC Book As Art X Andrea Marquit Fine Arts, Boston, MA Intervals: Silverpoint Paintings Eich Space, NYC Portfolio Series 1992 B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum, Washington, DC The Creation Series Künstlerhaus, Vienna, Austria Pierogi 2000 NY-Flatfiles (tour: May Museum of Judaica, Lawrence, NY; Chase/Freedman Gallery, Greater Hartford JCC, West Hartford, CT; 1997 The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY Current Undercurrent: Working in Brooklyn Robert I. Kahn Gallery, Congregation Emanu El, Houston, TX) Wynn Kramarsky Inc., NYC Recent Acquisitions 1990 Yeshiva University Museum, NYC The Creation Series: 15 Years of Silverpoint Jeffery Coploff Fine Art Ltd., NYC Sizzle and The Art Exchange 1989 Brad Cooper Gallery, Tampa, FL Silverpoint Drawings Boston Center for the Arts, Mills Gallery, Boston, MA The Drawing Show SOHO 20 Gallery,