INSTINCT

INSTINCT 1

INSTINCT MALA BREUER RAPHAËLLE GOETHALS JUDITH KRUGER JESSICA PALOMO JENNIFER WOLF Bentley Gallery Exhibition October 15 - December 11, 2021 BENTLEY GALLERY | 215 East Grant Street, Phoenix, AZ 85004 | 480-946-6060 | www.bentleygallery.com

The artists of INSTINCT create work directly attuned to the emotional and psychic landscapes that are the undercurrents of daily experience. They make work intuitively and in a call-and-response manner: mark and countermark, a burst of lightness to temper the shadows, and a soft wash to nip at a hard edge. Here, life is processed in graphite, paint and pigment, on paper, panel and canvas.

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MALA BREUER

Breuer grew up attending classes in painting and drawing from a young age at the California College of Arts and Crafts. After high school she attended the, now, San Francisco Art Institute where she studied under many notable artists, including Richard Diebenkorn, Clyfford Still, David Park, and Mark Rothko. Breuer matured as an artist in, and was profoundly affected by, the era of Abstract Expressionism, focusing more on material and application than representation. By the late 1960s, she was pouring water thinned washes of acrylic paint onto large, wet, stretched, vertical canvases. During an exhibition of those works, a San Francisco gallerist suggested that she head to New York, where abstraction, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art were continuing to gain traction. Breuer listened to this advice and set out to New York with intentions of staying only one year; she stayed for eight. In New York she began working with a palette knife, making direct, abstract marks with dark colors and with great density. She gained recognition as a significant painter during her time there. In 1984 she moved to northern New Mexico, a landscape that influenced Breuer’s use of color, light, and more minimal compositions. She lived and painted in New Mexico for another twenty-plus years.

Breuer’s work is included in the public collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, NM; the Albuquerque Museum; the Richard Levy Gallery in Albuquerque, NM; FIAC in Paris, France; Capital Group in Los Angeles, CA; and the Laura Carpenter Fine Art Gallery in Santa Fe, NM.

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Mala Breuer 9.77 acrylic on canvas 71.25 x 48 x 1.75 inches 1977

Mala Breuer 1972 (15) poured acrylic on canvas 65 x 47 x 1.5 inches 1972

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Mala Breuer 1976 (7) acrylic on canvas 54.75 x 85 x 1.5 inches 1976

Mala Breuer 1975 (6) poured acrylic on canvas 50.5 x 75.75 x 2 inches 1975

Mala Breuer 1975 (raw umber, phthalo blue, yellow umber) acrylic on canvas 56 x 75.25 x 1.75 inches 1975

Mala Breuer Untitled (9) acrylic on canvas 42.25 x 73.25 x 1.5 inches 1976

RAPHAËLLE GOETHALS

Focusing on painting as a space of exploration, Goethals has worked with wax, resin and pigments as her signature medium for over twenty years. She established her own vocabulary in the form of distinctive groups of paintings, which evolved concurrently. Place and process are integral to the works of the artist, who is known for her signature layered encaustic and pigment abstractions comprised of multiple thin layers brushed, scraped and burnished to a smooth and subtle finish.

Her uniquely translucent surfaces exist at the intersection of the contemplative and the sensual. As a verbal and cultural surimposition, the discreet presence of the grid anchors us in present time: an unapologetic nod to modernism and the vocabulary of painting, it coexists here with vast, glowing, luminous surfaces.

Born and raised in Brussels, Belgium, Goethals came to the United States in 1981 to further her formal education at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, CA. Attracted to the vastness of the landscape and the quality of light, she relocated to New Mexico in 1994 where she developed her mature painting style. Through her career she has been featured in Art in America, Art News, Wall Street Journal, Architectural Digest, and Luxe magazine amongst others. She is represented in distinguished permanent collections in the United States and abroad, including Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, New Mexico Museum of Fine Art, Boise Art Museum, Grace Museum, as well as numerous corporate and private collections.

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Raphaëlle Goethals Dust Stories (Zitronen) encaustic on panel 20 x 18 inches 2019

Raphaëlle Goethals Dust Stories 1207 encaustic on panel 20 x 18 inches 2015

Raphaëlle Goethals Bosphorus encaustic and mineral pigments on panel 69 x 78 inches 2010

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JUDITH KRUGER

Kruger, born 1955, is an American visual artist whose paintings, prints and mixed media works address Human-Environment connectivity and their shared vulnerabilities. She is recognized internationally for her advocacy of natural painting materials and historic, ecological processes.

Of her work, Kruger says, “Although my work broadly addresses humanenvironment connectivity, it is best experienced formally as its own visual language. I continually record and investigate transient light, weathered surfaces, impermanent shadows and depth of space and place. Pulverized organic and inorganic minerals and plants, natural binders, oxidized meal, plant fibered paper, wood and linen each embody an inherent, visceral beauty. When intentionally layered, alchemically altered and juxtaposed, their context shifts from an obvious familiar to a lesser-defined, ambiguous state. This indiscernible, yet deeply rooted, abstraction collectively signifies the preciousness, fragility and transience of all phenomena.”

Kruger’s solo exhibitions include Drawing Ground, MLT Gallery-Wisdom House, Litchfield, CT, Mingled Terrain, Richardson Art Museum, Wofford College, Spartanburg, SC (2018), An Alchemic View, Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, Connecticut (2015), Touching Rain, Hammond Museum, North Salem, NY (2015) Outside In, Bentley Gallery, Phoenix, Arizona (2014) and New Paintings at Morrison Gallery, Kent, Connecticut (2013). Her work is held in numerous private, public and corporate collections.

Kruger currently resides in Northwest, CT. Her studio is located in an old hosiery mill, 125 miles north of New York City, at the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains.

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Judith Kruger Ebb and Flow 4 mineral pigments, silver leaf, oil, pencil, Tenjugo paper on Kumohada paper on canvas 24 x 24 x 2.5 inches 2013

Judith Kruger Drawing Ground 1 minerals, cochineal, gold, silver, shell gesso on linen 40 x 40 x 2 inches 2019

Judith Kruger Drawing Ground 2 minerals, indigo, silver, shell gesso, kozo on linen 40 x 40 x 2 inches 2019

Judith Kruger Drawing Ground 5 minerals, silver, shell gesso on linen 40 x 40 x 2 inches 2019

Judith Kruger Drawing Ground 6 minerals, indigo, shell gesso on linen 40 x 40 x 2 inches 2019

Judith Kruger Drawing Ground 7 minerals, red pigment, shell gesso on linen 40 x 40 x 2 inches 2019

JESSICA PALOMO

Palomo is a phoenix-based artist who works in drawing and sculpture to investigate uncomfortable situations. She received her BFA in Sculpture from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX and her MFA in Drawing from Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. Her work has been exhibited internationally at the Palazzo Rinaldi in Italy, the Contemporary Art Space in China and locally at Tucson Museum of Art in Arizona.

Palomo’s work is a response to the grief of losing a loved one, a trauma that can overload and fracture the conscious mind, causing a shattered emotional state.

Through abstraction and mark-making, she explores the dynamics of this ruptured reality that place identity and emotion in a liminal, ambiguous space.

By rendering only a handful of distinct organic forms, the eyes rest merely for a moment before plunging into a sea of textural marks. These expressive involuntary marks do what language cannot, intuitively creating a passageway to concealed memories, recording a trace of their complexities through drawing, and ultimately logging the intricate and multifaceted sensations of suffering in hopes of creating a truer empathetic connection. These drawings speak from the body, connecting, sustaining, and transmitting traumatic impressions with each varied gestural mark.

The overall encounter is ambiguous in form and liminal in space, fluxing in perspective, and never providing a sense of clarity.

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Jessica Palomo Paradisaeidae Series graphite and yupo paper on panel 38 x 45.25 x 1 inches, 5 panel 2021

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Jessica Palomo Paradisaeidae Asteraceaes graphite and yupo paper on panel 38 x 25.75 x 1 inches, 2 panel 2021

Jessica Palomo Asteraceaes graphite and gesso on panel 12 x 6 x 1.5 inches 2019

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Jessica Palomo Zantedeschia Brunia graphite and yupo paper on panel 39 x 51 x 1 inches, 2 panel 2021

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Jessica Palomo Marchantia Polymorpha graphite and gesso on panel 12 x 6 x 1.5 inches 2021

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Jessica Palomo Orchidaceas VI.2 graphite and yupo paper on panel 38 x 25.75 x 1 inches, 2 panel 2021

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Jessica Palomo Papaver graphite and gesso on panel 12 x 6 x 1.5 inches 2021 47

Jessica Palomo Brunia Asteraceas graphite and gesso on panel 42 x 40 x 1 inches, 2 panels 2017 48

JENNIFER WOLF

Interested in communicating ideas of history, place and nature in her painting practice, Wolf utilizes natural dyes and minerals to feature a historically significant palette. For nearly two decades Wolf has nurtured a palette that tells the story of the places she’s been, the labor she has invested, and the curiosity that she has cultivated. Wolf deftly unites natural dyes and hand ground pigments into abstract compositions that capture a unique essence of color.

Unabashedly beautiful, Wolf’s paintings explore the elemental nature of color and texture. Wolf keenly controls the flow of her hand-made paints, isolating areas of lacy, textural pattern that overlap spaces of vivid color which blossom across the surface in energetic washes. Wolf’s compositions allude to the natural world in a manner that is both veiled and complex. Henry David Thoreau remarked in 1853 – “I have a room all to myself; it is nature,”- Wolf’s paintings feel like Thoreau’s room, immersive spaces that embrace the viewer in environments that could be under the sea, encased in clouds or inside the faceted walls of a gemstone. Jennifer Wolf is from Ventura, CA. She received her BA in Art History from UCLA and her MFA from Otis College of Art and Design.

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Jennifer Wolf Dye Painting #5 alum and iron mordant, indigo, madder root, mineral pigment on silk on canvas over birch panel 34 x 34 x 1.75 inches 2020

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Jennifer Wolf Dye Painting #4 iron and alum mordant, indigo, madder root on silk on canvas over birch panel 34 x 34 x 1.75 inches 2020

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Jennifer Wolf Dye Painting #1 copper mordant, weld, mineral pigment, osage, logwood on silk on canvas over birch panel 40 x 40 x 1.75 inches 2020

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Jennifer Wolf Dye Painting #3 copper mordant, weld, indigo, mineral pigment, silk on canvas over birch panel 48 x 48 x 1.75 inches 2020

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Jennifer Wolf Dye Painting #2 copper and alum mordant, cochineal, madder root, mineral pigment, silk on canvas over birch panel 34 x 34 x 1.75 inches 2020

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Jennifer Wolf Dye Painting #7 alum mordant, logwood, cochineal, mineral pigment, silk on canvas over panel 20 x 20 x 1.5 inches 2020

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Jennifer Wolf Dye Painting #6 Iron mordant, indigo, fustic wood, silk on canvas over panel 16 x 24 x 1.75 inches 2020

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BENTLEY GALLERY | 215 East Grant Street, Phoenix, AZ 85004 | 480-946-6060 | www.bentleygallery.com