PIGMENT
PIGMENT
LOUISE BLYTON MAKOTO FUJIMURA RAPHAËLLE GOETHALS JUDITH KRUGER HIROKO OTAKE JESSICA PALOMO CURATED BY JUDITH KRUGER
Bentley Gallery Exhibition January 17th - March 14th 2020
BENTLEY GALLERY | 215 East Grant Street Phoenix, AZ 85004 | 480-946-6060 | www.bentleygallery.com 1
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Pigment is a group show featuring works by Louise Blyton, Makoto Fujimura, Raphaëlle Goethals, Judith Kruger, Hiroko Otake and Jessica Palomo. These notable artists delve into the exploration of color not merely as visual sensation, but its physical manifestation as raw pigment and all that it conjures.
The fact that color is not tangible tends to be overlooked. Our eyes detect light with wavelengths that bounces off objects, determining the particular color we see. This selection of artworks engages with the corporeal material that governs what we perceive as color. Whether it’s the application of natural minerals to affirm our relationship with the earth or the vibrancy of pure pigment to accentuate form. Each of these artists utilizes the physical aspect of color to give meaningful insight into our visual faculty and beyond.
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LOUISE BLYTON 6
Louise Blyton is a reductive artist exploring the romance of raw linen and dry pigment. The artist’s geometrically shaped canvases explore color, light, and form through the visual language of Reductivism, an aesthetic style characterized by streamlined compositions, restricted color, and a reduction of form and means. Identifying with Reductivism’s simplicity, Blyton’s shaped canvases and three-dimensional wall sculptures elevate craftsmanship and process, achieving a compositional clarity that unifies color and form. To construct her works, Blyton covers custom-built balsa wood stretchers with raw linen, adorning them with layers of pure pigment or acrylic paint. Each pigment reacts differently to raw linen and requires a specific number of coats to reach the artist’s desired level of saturation. As the artist explains, “I’m always looking for a kind of quietness and harmony when making my works even if the color being used is loud.” The artist creates her own spatial dimension by manipulating the shape of the canvas, which escapes from the flat surface of the wall, confusing its role as a painting. “Rather than responding to the architecture they ask particular attributes of the building to act as support,” as some works appear to climb the surface of the walls, while others straddle columns and corners.
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The Long Red Line (series) pigment on linen 20.25 x 1 x 4 inches 2019 8
My Inner Beat pigment on linen 8 x 12.5 x 2 inches 2019 9
Bee-Loved pigment on linen 17 x 2 x 4 inches 2019 10
Catching a Kiss pigment on linen 12 x 16 x 1 inches 2019 11
The Sky Wanders By pigment on linen 10 x 12 x 12 inches 2019
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Little Poems (that reach in deep) pigment on linen 10 x 24 x 1 inches 2019
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MAKOTO FUJIMURA 14
As a contemporary artist drawing inspiration from 16th and 17th century Japanese art, using Nihonga (Japanese-style painting) materials of ground minerals such as azurite, malachite, as well as gold, I am delighted to partake in the PIGMENT exhibit at Bentley Gallery. The new works shown are "Silence and Beauty" series done in conjunction with writing my book of the same title (IVPress, 2017), reflecting on Shusaku Endo's "Silence." While painting the images, I was also serving as a special adviser to Martin Scorsese for the film of the same title. The paintings were done using refractive pigments to respond to the deep wrestling of faith, doubt and beauty exhibited in "Silence" story. "The Interior Castle" (2019) piece further reflects a condition of darkness which can, paradoxically, reveal light and hope. Mineral pigments create "slow art" both in terms of execution of layers which require one to slow down to manipulate the surface while drying, and for the viewer to slow down to be able to "see" the refractive colors that refuses to be captured in digital imagery. Thus my work has been called “a small rebellion against the quickening of time� (David Brooks NYT). I am simply trying to recover what it means to be fully human, with all of our senses fully alive. -Makoto Fujimura
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Silence - Ame (Rain) minerals and gesso on canvas 48 x 60 inches 2017
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Silence and Beauty - Eco minerals and gesso on canvas 48 x 72 inches 2016
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Interior of the Castle - Night minerals and gold on canvas 36 x 50 inches
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RAPHAËLLE GOETHALS 20
I have been using beeswax and damar resin with natural and mineral pigments as my medium of choice for the last twenty years. Originally, I came to the encaustic medium from a conceptual place. I was searching for a way to make painting relevant for myself, when I felt that traditional methods were no longer convincing. There is something very sensually physical in the encaustic process, the act of heating, pouring, and moving the medium around involves one’s entire body. In my early works I applied pigments directly on the surface, rubbing into incisions made in the painting, or on calligraphic marks floating on top of the surface. A good example of this is a piece titled “The Missing One," which is in the permanent collection of SMOCA in Scottsdale. Longing to use materials having their own history and energy, I soon found myself collecting pigments from travels to Morocco, Jordan, Italy, and then returning to my home landscape of New Mexico. Being inspired tremendously by the work of the German installation artist Wolfgang Laib, I began gathering the samples from these explorations of the land as a first step in an evolving process. This became a meditative and spiritual practice which after nearly two decades, eventually brought me back to my roots as a painter. Nowadays, due to practical concerns and the scale of my work, I mostly use pigments available commercially which I then mix within the wax medium. The three pieces presented in this exhibition have a more subtle use of pigments; each painting consists of countless thin layers of encaustic, poured, painted, and scraped, then buffed. -RaphaĂŤlle Goethals 21
Dust Stories 1207 encaustic on panel 20 x 18 inches 2015 22
Dust Stories (Zitronen) encaustic on panel 20 x 18 inches 2019 23
Bossphorus encaustic and mineral pigments on panel 69 x 78 inches 2010
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JUDITH KRUGER 26
Through the employ of natural pigments or Earth, as art material, my work addresses human-environment connectivity including our shared strengths and vulnerabilities. My Drawing Ground paintings represent a recent exploration in building surfaces with Connecticut quartz collected from the mines situated around my studio. I am physically “drawing ground” from my environment and, in some cases, the foundational grounds of the work build in such a way to reveal areas that appear to look “drawn” when covered with another layer of a different pigment. Through the coming together of locally and globally procured pigments on one single, harmonious surface and the juxtaposing of intentionally diverse levels, I am orchestrating the idea of universal compatibility best conveyed in 1940 by Woody Guthrie, “this land was made for you and me." There is no better way for a contemporary painter to comment on the urgency of planet care than with pigments from the planet itself. -Judith Kruger
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Drawing Ground 1 minerals, cochineal, gold, silver,shell gesso on linen 40 x 40 inches 2019 28
Drawing Ground 2 minerals, indigo, silver, shell gesso, kozo on linen 40 x 40 inches 2019 29
Drawing Ground 5 minerals, silver, shell gesso on linen 40 x 40 inches 2019 30
Drawing Ground 6 minerals, indigo,shell gesso on linen 40 x 40 inches 2019 31
Drawing Ground 7 minerals, red pigment, shell gesso, silver on linen 40 x 40 inches 2019 32
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HIROKO OTAKE 34
Hiroko Otake studied at Tokyo University of the Arts, majoring in the Traditional Japanese Painting method referred to as Nihonga. From 2015-2016, she entered the Program of Overseas Study for Upcoming Artists, which is sponsored by the Japanese government’s Agency for Cultural Affairs. She spent this year of her grant in New York City performing various scholarly activities. Currently based in Tokyo, Otake frequently works with themes that are in relation to butterflies and flowers. When asked why she decided to follow her path as an artist, Otake expressed her desire to see original works that she had not seen anywhere else. She began to create and exhibit her artwork aspiring to make her inner images and ideas tangible. By doing so, she also became aware that through her work, she was able to better connect herself to the society around her. While Otake’s works have previously been primarily displayed within Japan, she is now working on a much more global scale, creating and showcasing in major cities such as New York, Hong Kong, Barcelona, and Taipei.
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Floating Instant - vol. 2 rock pigments and silver leaf on paper over panel 71 x 89 inches 2019
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JESSICA PALOMO 38
My 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, I explore 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. - Jessica Palomo
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Paradisaeidae Tulipas 1 thru 7 graphite, yupo and panel installation 41
Orchidaceas VI graphite and gesso on panel 12 x 6 inches 2020 42
Asteraceaes graphite and gesso on panel 12 x 6 inches 2019 43
Orchidaceas VII graphite and gesso on panel 12 x 6 inches 2020 44
Paradisaeidae Series graphite and yupo paper on panel 38 x 29 inches 2020 45
Paeonias III graphite and gesso on panel 6 x 12 inches 2019
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Paradisae Tuberosa graphite and gesso on panel 6 x 12 inches 2019
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Syringa Vulgaris V graphite and gesso on panel 6 x 12 inches 2019
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Brunia
graphite and gesso on panel 6 x 12 inches 2019
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Paradisaeidae Tulipas 1 graphite and yupo paper on panel 38 x 16.5 inches 2020 50
Paradisaeidae Tulipas 2 graphite and yupo paper on panel 38 x 16.5 inches 2020 51
Paradisaeidae Tulipas 3 graphite and yupo paper on panel 38 x 8.25 inches 2020 52
Paradisaeidae Tulipas 4 graphite and yupo paper on panel 38 x 8.25 inches 2020 53
Paradisaeidae Tulipas 5 graphite and yupo paper on panel 38 x 8.25 inches 2020 54
Paradisaeidae Tulipas 6 graphite and yupo paper on panel 38 x 8.25 inches 2020 55
Paradisaeidae Tulipas 7 graphite and yupo paper on panel 38 x 8.25 inches 2020 56
Rosaceae (Fantin-Latour) graphite and gesso on panel 12 x 6 inches 2019 57
Orchidaceas III graphite and gesso on panel 44 x 92 inches 2016
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BENTLEY GALLERY 215 East Grant Street Phoenix, AZ 85004 480-946-6060 www.bentleygallery.com
