MAUREEN GALLACE

In this exhibition of new paintings and drawings the artist has refined her drawings to a series of reductive gestures. These monochromatic charcoal drawings distill certain qualities found in her color-filled paintings into a more “raw” or “free” state. In both the drawings and the paintings, the artist’s mark-making examines the distance between documentation and invention. This allows multiple paths to emerge for both the artist and the viewer. One such path may be how the narratives of our individual and collective experience are shaped by being in a particular place, including that place being in front of a painting.

Though these new works share an emotional and formal genealogy with Gallace’s prior depictions of the vernacular beach-town enclaves that have long bloomed in her practice, they also indicate a newfound sense of the temporal. Gallace in her own words:

Connecticut is my home state and a place I’ve regularly returned to for both work and family. This past year I’ve had part time residence in an old house near a beach. This change of environment allowed me to make and observe the sources of my work in an expanded way.

Working in this new/old environment is not a radical change but it is a change. Whether it’s painting inside a room with different lighting and air, or having the ability to look out the window to observe scenes for drawings, this work captures my ongoing process of looking in a few directions at once: backwards in time and place, my current moment, while looking forward to see what can be made of it.

Maureen Gallace has been the subject of major solo exhibitions, including a 20-year survey show, “Clear Day,” at MoMA PS1, New York, in 2017. Other exhibitions include: La Conservera, Murcia, Spain, 2011; The Art Institute of Chicago, 2006; Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, 2004; Dallas Museum of Art, 2003; and the 2010 Whitney Biennial.