| Joanne
Mattera is a nationally acknowledged master of encaustic,
which has a refulgence and materiality that is unique among painting
mediums. Her book, The Art of Encaustic Painting: Contemporary Expression
in the Ancient Medium of Pigmented Wax, has become the standard
reference on the subject, and she lectures widely on the topic.
In Pure Color, her third solo exhibition at Marcia Wood
Gallery, the New York artist shows paintings from her new series,
Silk Road, and the most recent paintings from her longtime series,
Uttar. Both series are united by pure color—a palette of radiant
and translucent hues—and an abiding reference to the grid.
Describing her work as “lush minimalism,”
Mattera mines a vein that is succulent in hue while reductive in
image. In her new Silk Road series, she pushes those elements to
the extreme. Each painting is a luminous monochrome achieved by
layers of translucent paint applied at successive right angles;
the subtlest of grids is formed by a trail of brushmarks or intentionally
grainy elements within the paint. Mattera has limned each painting
to heighten the intensity of its color field. Sizes range from an
intimate 12-by-12-inches to midsize panels, also square. The title
Silk Road was suggested by the texture and iridescence of woven
silk cloth.
The Uttar series, begun in late 2000, consists now
of nearly 300 paintings that range from small individual panels
of 12 by 12 inches to multipanel works that are over four feet in
either direction. These latter are among Mattera’s newest.
The Uttar works are made up of ever-recombinant grids composed of
blocks or stacks of color, in a manner described as "voluptuous"
by critic Lilly Wei, who notes (in the essay "Geometry Reloaded")
that in the paintings of Mattera, the loosely- and fluidly-worked
encaustic within
the grid appears “to melt down…into pure, irresistible
paint.”
For more information about this artist, please visit
www.joannemattera.com |
