All images Š 2012 Laini Nemett. Catalogue essay copyright Š 2012 Christopher Stackhouse. All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced without the written permission of the copyright holder.
here is where we say it is
LAINI NEMETT
Meyerhoff Galler y Mar yland Institute College of Ar t 1300 Mount Royal Avenue Baltimore, MD 21217
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Intimate Looking - Paintings of Laini Nemett by Christopher Stackhouse
“I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.” - Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
Reasons to paint tend to be profoundly internal, and are essentially born out of respect for the traditions housed in painting’s history. Laini Nemett’s art approves the formal efficacies of painting definitively. Concentrating on painterly and poetic communion with specific physical locations, Nemett examines the narrative possibilities in becoming familiar with architectural space and the environmental conditions under which such spaces are produced and used. What surfaces on her canvases that may disclose an obsession with contemporary realism, is a balance of empirical observation and imagination, which dislocates ‘presence in a place’ to serve both intellectual and sensual provinces of abstraction. The selection of paintings in the exhibition “Here is where we say it is” shown at the Meyerhoff Gallery in the Maryland Institute College of Art present Nemett’s exercise and facility with scale, and formal commitment to light, color, line, symmetry and composition. The image content rendered in this body of work articulate impressions of interiors and exteriors of residential and public structures, and peripherally, the landscape the artist
encountered while visiting the island of São Tomé, Africa. For later reference, she used photography, drawing, and small scale sculpture to document buildings in various localities. In one of her large canvases, Stage (2012), is an imagined shanty depot that might provide shelter for a pedestrian thoroughfare, which leads through thresholds to seemingly nowhere. There are walls with no roofs, left exposed to sky and natural elements. She uses oil paint and collage techniques to inscribe perspectival shifts, variable surface tonalities, and optical textures to exemplary effect. There are two studies for this painting: Stage, Study (2011), an 11”x 13” oil and collage on paper and Stage, Model (2011), a small cardboard maquette, also detailed by collage cut from photos of the original makeshift buildings. This particular planning method using two and three dimensional inversion (modeling and remodeling), to replicate and study nuanced volumetric relationships, likely provided Nemett with more improvisational capacity to experiment with color value, depth cues, patterning, and other compositional devices to seduce the eye. Compelling rhythm imparted visually by the multi-colored wooden supports of the shanty, their thin length, spare placement, their perceived distance from each other, give counterpoint to the weathered density of the distressed, black & white checkered tiling that decorates the platform upon which the supports seem to float. Vacant, yet enlivened by anticipatory tension, the sunlit
passageways and fenestrae in this painting, like earlier made paintings Naima Exits and Kito at Home, are dreamlike depictions. Nemett’s paintings convey overall consistent, quietly energetic, contemplative mood. However parenthetical Nemett’s use of photography may be, her use of it for esthetic study and documentation of shanty construction, brings to mind photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher’s photos of the Pennsylvania Coal Mine Tipples. The Becher’s black & white photos of Appalachian coal mining delivery systems and Nemett’s diurnal São Tomé paintings tease out the expressive line quality of rudimentarily made structures. Both the tipples and the shanties leave roughly framed timber and board exposed, and each type of building feels temporary and susceptible to neglect and dilapidation. The human presence is felt, and made poignant by the empty stillness of human absence in the paintings and photos. The Becher coal mine photos and Nemett’s canvases as well as her small sculpture studies, residually expose ways of life and potential circumstances under which lives are lived. Where the Bechers tend to objectively document what they see, Nemett strives to document her subjectivity in relation to what she has seen. For the moment, sculpture and photography are ancillary to Nemett’s painting practice. Her work does not yet decisively straddle abstraction and figuration, though the paintings in “Here is where we say it is” show indebtedness to certain artistic antecedents that have: the landscapes of Louisa Matthiasdottir, Richard Deibenkorn’s Ocean
Park Series, and the color and collage fusions of Romare Bearden, to name a few. R.B. Kitaj, an artist who mercurially defied stylistic category while maintaining a signature hand, has one painting from which anyone also looking at Nemett’s paintings could gain a sense of her potential direction. Kitaj’s Apotheosis of Groundlessness (1964), at 7’ x 5’ but horizontal in orientation, is of a similar size to Nemett’s larger paintings. The content of the late artist’s painting is of an expansive single story warehouse interior, striated with multi-colored post and cross bracing supports perspectively advancing and receding against multiple fields of color that represent undefined parameters of floor, ceiling and walls. It is an ‘empty room’ that brims with visual poetry that depends only on representative color, shape and line. Unlike Kitaj, subverting an inclination toward creating a particular, contained, pictorial language might be counterintuitive to Nemett. Her probing level of focus is conducive to developing a specific yet amply generative style. What she has in common with the artist comparatively noted is sensitivity to the relationship between optical texture and meaning, and curious spatial awareness. Nemett has found her own set of vast, open rooms, small recesses, and corners of the painterly mind to turn. There is fertile conceptual territory to explore in the interstice between ‘presence’ and ‘absence’ in whatever given setting she finds interesting. Christopher Stackhouse is an art critic, painter, and poet living in New York City. He is a contributing writer for Art in America, and a contributing poetry editor for Fence Magazine. He is the author of Plural (Counterpath Press) and co-author of image/text collaboration Seismosis (1913 Press) with writer John Keene. 15
Pain tings
Planks, 2012, Oil and acrylic on linen, 76 x 53 in
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Drift, 2012, Oil, acrylic, and gesso transfer on linen, 86 x 76 in
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Stage, 2012, Oil, acrylic, and gesso transfer on linen, 76 x 61 in
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Collected, 2012, Oil on linen, 76 x 135 in
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Kito at Home, 2011, Oil on linen, 76 x 88 in
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Naima Exits, 2011, Oil on linen, 67 x 88 in
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Models & C o llag e s
Stage Model, 2011, Printed paper on cardboard, 14 x 13 x 12 in
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Kito at Home, Model, 2011, Printed paper on cardboard, 11 x 17 x 14 in
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Collected, Model, 2011, Printed paper on cardboard, 12 x 17 x 13 in
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Naima in the Afternoon, 2011, Printed paper on cardboard, 15 ½ x 12 x 8 in
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Neves, 2011, Oil and collage on paper, 10 x 16 in
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Stage, 2011, Oil and collage on paper, 11 x 13 in
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Exterior, 2011, Oil and collage on paper, 10 x 10 in
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From the Road, 2011, Oil and collage on paper, 8 x 14 in
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Cabo Verde Collective, 2012, Oil and collage on paper, 10 ½ x 16 Ÿ in
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Falls Extended 2012, Oil and collage on paper, 10 x 16 ½ in
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Baltimore Streetcar Museum, 2012, Oil and collage on paper, 11 ½ x 16 in
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North Ave & Elsewhere, 2012, Oil and collage on paper, 17 ½ x 14 ž in
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The Lot Between, 2012, Oil and collage on paper, 14 x 12 in
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R e lated Wo rk s
Entry, 2011, Oil on linen, 48 x 39 in
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Naima’s House, 2011, Oil on muslin mounted on board, 8 x 16 in
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By the Water, 2011, Oil on muslin mounted on board, 6 x 8 in
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From the Sidewalk, 2011, Oil on muslin mounted on board, 8 x 8 in
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Umbrian Stairwell 2, 2011, Oil on muslin mounted on board, 16 x 4 in
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Umbrian Stairwell 3, 2011, Oil on muslin mounted on board, 8 x 8 in
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Motel Lot, 2011, Oil on muslin mounted on board, 8 x 8 in
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LAINI NEMETT BORN
2011
Fourth National Juried Exhibition, juried by William Bailey, Prince Street Gallery, New York, NY
1984, Baltimore, MD 2011
Adam´s Crayons: A Tale of A Few Stories, Stevenson University Gallery, Stevenson, MD
2008
Corazón Loco, Espai B, Barcelona, Spain
EDUCATION 2012
Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD MFA Hoffberger School of Painting
2006
Brown University, Providence, RI BA with honors in Visual Arts, BA History of Art & Architecture; Magna cum laude
A Jaca dos Americanos, Casa das Artes Criaçao Ambiente Utopias (CACAU), São Tomé, Africa
2004-08 Alumni Exhibition, Carver Center for Arts & Technology, Baltimore, Maryland From Zeros to Heroes, Sarah Doyle Women´s Center, Providence, RI 2006, 04 Juried Spring Show, Bell Gallery, Providence, RI
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2006
The Big One: Annual Juried Show, Hillel Gallery, Providence, RI
2012
2004
Laini Nemett, Nisa Zwagel, & Rachel Levinson, Gordon Center for Performing Arts, Baltimore, MD
Groundwork, Canterbury Salon, Baltimore, MD Here is where we say it is, Meyerhoff Gallery, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD
2010
Space and Its Companions, Warner Gallery, O’Brien Arts Center, St. Andrews School, Middleton, DE
2009
Barcelona & Other Doorways, Mason Hall Atrium Gallery, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
2006
Intimate Instances, List Art Gallery, Brown University, Providence, RI
2003
Laini Nemett: Recent Paintings, List Art Gallery, Brown University, Providence, RI
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2012
MAEF Alumni Exhibition, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD
Dialoghi dell’Arte, McMaster Gallery, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC
Director’s Choice: Next Generation, Rymer Gallery, Nashville, TN
Bethesda Painting Awards, Gallery B, Bethesda, MD
Summer Show, Galerie Francois et Ses Freres, Baltimore, MD 2003-05 Conversations, Traveling Exhibition: Evergreen House, Baltimore, MD, Delaware Center for Contemporary Art (DCCA), Wilmington, DE, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY 2001-02 Barry and Laini Nemett: Related Works of Father & Daughter, Chung-Cheng Art Gallery, Sun Yat Sen Hall, St. John’s University, Jamaica, NY 2000
Parallel and Crooked Tracks, University of Maryland, University College Art Gallery, College Park, MD
SELECTED HONORS 2012
Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant Bethesda Painting Awards, “Young Artist Award”
2007
Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award Nominee
2006-07 Fulbright Scholar in Painting, Barcelona, Spain 2006
Serena Roberts, Brown and RISD Unite Over Art and Free Drinks, Brown Daily Herald, October, 2004
Ann Moranis Belsky Prize, Brown University
2006, 04 Minnie Helen Hicks Premium Award for Painting 2005 2005
2001
Sandy Alexander, Students Hoping to Be One of 20, The Baltimore Sun, February, 2002
Conway Travel Grant, Brown University Joseph L. Adolphe, The Ordinary Begets the Mysterious, The Chronicle of Higher Education, December, 2001
1st Place Scholarship, Maryland Artist Equity Foundation Presidential Scholar in the Arts Semi-Finalist
Jared Featherstone, Color, Media, and Family Mix in FatherDaughter Exhibit. Gazette (feature article), April, 2000
NFAA ARTS (Arts Recognition and Talent Search) Level 1 winner in Visual Arts: Painting
Deborah Walike, Two’s Company, Jewish Times (feature article), April, 2000
Maryland Distinguished Scholar, Talent in the Arts
RESIDENCIES 2006-07
US Fulbright Grant in Painting, Barcelona, Spain
2005
Yale Norfolk Summer Residency, Norfolk, CT Trinity College, Trinity-in-Barcelona Visual Arts Program, Barcelona, Spain
2004, 07
Odd Nerdrum Summer Painting Residency, Stavern, Norway
2001
Marie Walsh Sharpe Summer Seminar, Colorado Springs, CO
BIBLIOGRAPHY Marcus Civin, Perception: Laini Nemett and Meg Rorison, MFA’s from MICA, ARTslant Worldwide, June 2012 Cara Ober, Family Practice, Urbanite, Arts and Culture, March, 2011 Jenny Glick, Five Up-And-Comers Making Their Mark, The Jewish Times, Arts and Life, March, 2010 Figures in Space, Painting Exhibition by Laini Nemett, The Mason Gazette, February, 2009 Robin Steele, Art Opening in Hillel Draws Students, Parents, Brown Daily Herald, October, 2005
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Thank you to the students, faculty, and staff of the Maryland Institute College of Art. Special thanks to Joan Waltemath, Director of the Hoffberger School of Painting, Christopher Stackhouse, and the MICA Alumni Association.
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