HEATHER GUERTIN

Heather Guertin’s abstractions are unified by conditions of density, compression, and relational shape. Forms extend from edge to edge of her canvases, emphasising continuity, a fullness of things spreading out like a wild garden or topographical map. Guertin’s gestures remain perpetually in the act of joining—colours, patterns, and textures—together.

Broad passages read as watery plains or fragrant hillsides, while striated marks suggest protective surfaces, layers of rind, skin, or membrane. Veils of white or pastel stippled dots, points, and circles introduce resistance within proliferating fields, slowing the eye and interrupting any reading of the work as pure expressionism. Difference and unharmonious elements fit together with precision, generating a coherent and satisfying dissonance.

Guertin’s use of colour is bold, placing complimentary hues in anchoring contrasts. Black against yellow, orange with blue—this creates a push and pull across the surface. While certain colours are allowed to recede or advance, no one area of the canvas functions as background or ground; instead, her forms contour directly against one another. The paintings resist perspectival hierarchy in favour of a saturated field where each zone participates equally in the excess.

Forms bend toward fragment and irregularity. This is the result of Guertin’s pre-painting process, where she assembles compositions through collage studies, which are then translated to graphite drawings, refining line, shape, and texture. She embraces this delicate balance of juxtaposed ‘scraps’ of varied origin, assembled through visible seams into dense ornamental wholes. Individual fragments assert themselves, yet are bound into larger systems of abstract high energy zones, pushing and pulling and intensifying the composition through their union.

The heart of Guertin’s practice is perception: what we see and how it all fits together. Forms soften and harden, shed and dissolve, shaped by contact, proximity, and adjacency. Her motifs, rhythms, and colours converge as a generative force, combining into texture and pattern. The paintings in the exhibition intensify through this friction of edges, producing a visible energy as distinct parts meet and are held together without reconciliation. Ultimately what is revealed, is uncompounded pure essence, formed from the accumulation of airy passages, pugnacious and pliable colours, and ornamental vibrating chromatic relationships.

Heather Guertin(b. 1981 Worcester, Massachusetts) received her Master of Fine Arts from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Recent exhibitions include a two person exhibition at Kurimanzutto, Mexico City and a solo exhibition at JDJ Ice House in Garrison, NY, Two Thousand Eighteen, Brennan & Griffin, NY, Aluminum Linoleum, Proyectos Monclova, MX and The Whole, Galería Agustina Ferreyra, San Juan, Puerto Rico. Group exhibitions include Grouper, Broadway, NY, How to Call the Spirits, Chapter, NY, East Side to the West Side, Flag Art Foundation, NY, and Addicted to Highs and Lows, Bortolami, NY. She has performed in locations such as White Columns in New York and in participation with the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, PA. In 2013, Guertin published a novella titled Model Turned Comedian with Social Malpractice and Publication Studio, which was acquired by the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp. In 2015 a monograph of her works was published by Hassla Books. Guertin lives and works in upstate New York.