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| d.berman gallery Gladys Poorte + Sarah Greene by June Mattingly // regularmain.com The art in this two-person show is astoundingly connected because both imaginative artists use similar commonplace stimulations, or what were called “found objects,” a mundane manufactured product given a new identity in an artwork, the concept credited to Marcel Duchamp almost a hundred years ago. This style is a particularly trendy in art today. Both artists are female and both live in Austin but the art looks quite different in spite of all that. Gladys Poorte’s New Series “Unavoidable Outcome” |
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| Jane Mattingly - Art Contributor for modaustin.net writes a regular blog regularmain.com focusing on Texas Artists. |
| “Caught in the Complexity of the Order,” 2010, oil on wood, 16 1/2 x 50 3/4 inches |
| This artist’s approaching miniature, slightly surrealist, creature populated landscapes presented with exquisite painterly execution provoke a quizzical narrative requiring serious pondering. To be completely on her wave length, read excerpts from Poorte’s Artist’s Statement below. “I arrive at my paintings by an intuitive process. I create set-ups using a variety of common everyday objects such as tools, hardware, toys, plastic gadgets, etc. I arrange them in elaborate settings and then paint these from life. The objects are selected by their shape, color, material, weight or weightlessness, softness or sharpness, opaqueness or transparency, etc. to bring out associations that are different from the objects’ actual function… My intention is that they are perceived both ways: they are seen as what they really are but they are read as members of a small parallel world. This small parallel world echoes our own world. It’s a way of looking at ourselves in the mirror. ” |
| “Their Quiet Ways,” 2010, oil on canvas, 15 x 49 1/2 inches |
| Poorte, a native of Buenos Aires lived there until she was 25, traveled and returned home to get a Bachelor’s in English. Since settling in Austin to get a degree in studio art from the University of Texas, she’s a full time artist. “The process is similar to that of children who use toys and other objects to create a story. My characters and stories however, are not imaginary but those of our real world.” |
| Sarah Greene Reed’s New Series “On the Dot” What is so comforting about Reed’s unique artistic output is she blatantly creates striking art. Beauty is skin deep, doesn’t the old saying explicate? “In these turbulent times, I feel people need beauty more than ever. I wrestled for years with the guilt of making pretty art, now I am allowing myself to make unapologetically beautiful work.” |
| Left: “V, from On the Dot Series,” 2010, 11 x 11 inches // archival pigment print of digital collages Right: “IX, from On the Dot Series,” 2010, 11 x 11 inches // archival pigment print of digital collages Photographs courtesy of d.berman gallery |
| Reed strives to balance her sacrosanct object and photograph collection and almost consuming fascination with color with her individualized interpretations of life and art to approximate as picture-perfect a visual perspective as possible – and succeeds handsomely. Her Artist’s Statement goes on to say, “I scrap the rectangle entirely and am making perfectly circular collages to be printed and framed in circles. By tweaking the format, I’ve challenged myself to approach composition in a new way. “On the Dot” addresses the formal issue of color. Twelve of the collages are arranged in a circle, mimicking the color wheel while referring to the hours on a clock.” |
| “I-XII, from on the Dot Series,” 2010, each circle 11 x 11 inches 12 archival pigment prints of digital collages |
| “I never throw anything away... I have always collected things: postcards, objects with roosters on them, mid-century ceramics, fabric, tiaras, plastic food, Lucite purses, bride and groom cake toppers, string, fortune cookies, objects that are that specific shade of light green that I love, you get the point … In a nutshell, my collages are personal landscapes devised from a catalogue of images I have created over the years.’ Background-wise, Green who lives in Austin has a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the University of Houston. |