SPEED LIMIT: Nathalie Du Pasquier

Anton Kern Gallery is proud to present SPEED LIMIT, Nathalie Du Pasquier’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. As done previously in the third floor gallery, the artist now exercises her masterful understanding of color and space to transform the first and second floor galleries into a dynamic trail of intuitively sequenced paintings and drawings.

Across the two floors, Du Pasquier integrates representational paintings dated from 2002 - 2007 with purely abstract works dated from 2013 - present. The representational paintings are faithful depictions of objects bathed in the natural light of her studio. Each composition is based on a real life model that the artist carefully constructs on a tabletop. In the translation of the arranged objects to the painted surface, Du Pasquier isolates them from their inherent domestic context and focuses on rendering their geometric forms in space. The interplay of shadows and reflections, the active brushstrokes, the cropping and perspective animates the works. Household objects such as a domino or a rubber glove, become more open-ended, and extend an invitation toward abstraction.

The abstract paintings are arrangements of a different sort; they are varied combinations of colors and forms that have persisted in the artist’s repertoire over the years. Freed from the task of representing any real objects or lighting conditions in front of her, Du Pasquier spontaneously flexes her imagination and the cumulative knowledge of a lifetime of analyzing shapes.

The exhibition title’s allusion to time, distance, and forward motion is emphasized by a continuous red racing stripe painted down the gallery’s long walls. Periodic pauses in the line, expressed through staccato horizontal dashes at varying heights, a diversion around a coupling of canvases, and stable blockings of color (which become illusionistic plinths), instruct and pace the viewing experience.

Complementing the paintings, the artist presents a suite of framed drawings inside a specially constructed square cabin, its exterior painted in red and white vertical stripes. The selection of drawings includes abstractions as well as plant still lifes paired with painted geometric symbols. The addition of a colorful patterned rug on the floor (designed by Du Pasquier) underscores the domesticity of the small room. The balanced combination of the various elements, both flat and three-dimensional, asks us to consider the relationships between the objects within this intentional environment.

Throughout the exhibition, the artist stretches the boundaries of what a painting is, where it physically begins and ends, and where the process of creating a work begins and ends as well. As the curator Luca Lo Pinto explains, in Du Pasquier’s world, a painting “exists as object, space or environment, in which any distinction between the work of art and its display structure has been erased. (..) The device of the exhibition is a dynamic tool that allows her to use her works as raw material with which to build other, new creations.” Indeed combining and recombining works from different periods of her career complicates the distinction between past, present, and future, and situates her work in a state of constant potential for transformation.