JUTTA KOETHER

Koether’s practice is defined by her decades-long engagement with the histories of painting. The paintings in the present series are titled Let ‘em roll, a phrase differentiated across the canvases with the artist’s unconventional capitalizations. In these works, Giacometti’s composition is deconstructed and transformed by Koether’s gridded structures—which in themselves relate to the lineage of geometric abstraction, including the work of Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee. Koether began her Grid paintings in the mid-2000s to explore her relationship to figuration and modernism, considering Mondrian as well as the abstraction of Agnes Martin, among others. Here, notably, the size of the underlying grid changes throughout the twelve canvases. Other “disturbances,” in the artist’s words, appear in her gestural paint application and use of iridescent, neon, and metallic colors—stimulating different perceptual effects. This, in concert with the varied interpretations of Giacometti’s source canvas, incite questions around the act of looking and, above all, create an invitation to further study.

Speaking of the apple, Koether notes that it “rolls through all of my work”—often used to indicate the ambiguity inherent to figuration by becoming a “red sphere or even a breast.” Throughout her career, Koether has used what she refers to as “motifs that have made their own journeys.” For instance, Giacometti’s depiction of an apple drew on the flattened and expressive still lifes of Paul Cézanne—the post-Impressionist who constitutes another important influence on Koether. Her palette in the Let ‘em roll series is particularly suggestive of Cézanne’s rich reds and blues—underscoring the recent influx of blues in her Grid paintings, previously dominated by red hues.

Enchanted with Cézanne’s red apples tumbling over blue fabrics, early twentieth-century poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, “This rolling of red into blue is an action that seems to arise...” Koether’s phrase “Let ‘em roll” is a gesture that further points to her relationship with music and the histories of punk rock and the post-punk scene in Germany and New York. In tRaVeLiNgliGHt, Koether establishes inquisitiveness at the core of her practice, merging explorations of art-historical motifs and recognition, intervention and disruption. “What are we relating to when we say modernism?” she asks, encouraging the viewer to occupy a space in relation to painting that situates the medium and the act in the present moment.

Courtesy Lévy Gorvy Dayan.