JUTTA KOETHER

Jutta Koether: Femme Colonne elaborates on the artist’s tradition of canonical reference. The exhibition borrows its title from a term coined by art historian T. J. Clark in an essay on the French classicist Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665). In his reading of Poussin’s The Sacrament of Marriage (1647–1648), Clark refers to the figure at the painting’s far left as the ‘femme-colonne,’ which literally translates to ‘woman column’—the folds of her clothes and veil are all that remain visible beyond the looming architectural form at her right. Koether’s paintings in Femme Colonne reckon with and reimagine this mysterious figure, simultaneously encompassing the human and the architectural, the upright and the horizontal, the marginal and the pivotal.

The paintings on view extend representational motifs and schemas Koether has developed throughout her artistic career; her signature red hue and reconceptualised female nudes respond to Clark’s academic proposition of uprightness, femininity, and light. Like the ‘woman column’ herself, Koether’s Femme Colonne is what Clark might call ‘an invitation to reading.’ Portraying a vibrant dialogue with art history, the seven distinctive works also encourage contemporary discourse, their iterative structure functioning as a unified body which interweaves verticality, gender, materiality, and paint. In her project of revisiting, remaking, and (re)presenting the femme-colonne, Koether paints new, evocative formations that rely upon and engage the participation of the viewer—the presence of the being standing always nearly out of frame.