KELLY BEEMAN

In Kelly Beeman’s work, life flows serenely. Young girls bask in thetranquility of North American parks and gardens. Nature is idyllic, andnothing seems to disturb the peace of the languid protagonists. Singing,playing the piano, lying on beds or lush patches of grass, striking a poseon a shopping street, or holding a bouquet of white flowers, these girlsinhabit a world of serenity, luxury, and pleasure.

Yet we know that the ‘real’ world is very different, marred by aggression,violence, tension, and war, leaving little room for relaxation and personalwell-being. Beeman’s vision is a Platonic ideal, depicting the world notas it is but as it should be. Over time, she began to diminish the emphasison individuality in her subjects, perceiving them as components of asingular entity. Currently, the only distinguishing features among thesefigures are their attire, scale—such as the smaller stature of the little girlcompared to others—and occasionally, gender, particularly whendepicting romantic relationships. She posits that the world encapsulatedwithin her work might exclude individual experience portraying it insteadas an idealised realm of flawless, seamless connectivity. In this envisionedspace, the notion of internal conflict or tension within individuals seemsincongruous.

The history of art is full of recurring faces. Beeman’s work recalls the soft,elongated features and intense gaze of the woman who haunted SandroBotticelli’s paintings. Like Petrarch’s Laure or Dante’s Beatrice, thisenigmatic woman, who utterly captivated the painter, embodies thefeminine ideal. Yet there are also echoes of Amedeo Modigliani’s angelicfaces with their vacant, soul-searching eyes, as well as the pre-Raphaelitepaintings of Rossetti and Burne-Jones.

The exhibition is titled Distant Cities. Many works contain architecturalelements that serve as reassuring and threatening settings for Beeman’sfigures. The city is presented as a metaphor for a future that may not necessarily be bright and from which we try to escape despite theapparent calmness of the scenes. Our relationship with this futurebecomes more than ambivalent, at times frightening, at times exciting.A smaller figure symbolises the movement back and forth in time. Theartist says, ‘She’s a younger version of the ‘others.’ Sometimes, theyseem to protect her. Elsewhere, she appears to be running away, andthey try to dissuade her... I often think about time, experience, and thatstrange feeling of discontinuity that we sometimes have in life, especiallyduring experiences of trauma and loss. Some of the paintings in thisexhibition are more memory than fiction, but the line is quite blurred’.

Beeman’s work is defined by its clear lines, which are highly graphic andmeticulously arranged. Everything in her universe is in its place; even theflight of birds in the sky seems to follow a precise, preordained path.However, one feels that even a minor disruption could create chaos inthis well-oiled machine, creating a sense of both solidity and fragility.

The paintings have the delicacy of painted silk and the smoothness ofmarble inlays. Yet they exude a certain coldness, keeping us at arm’slength. There’s something old-fashioned about them, as though they hadbeen painted in a bygone era—as if a major catastrophe had reshuffledthe cards, turning the works into signals from another world. As the artistaptly says, ‘Sometimes they wish time would stand still.’

Press release courtesy Perrotin