September 22 – November 6, 2011
Opening with performance by the artist, Thursday, September 22, 6 – 9pm
JULIE M. GALLERY
15 Mill Street
Building 37, Suite 103
Toronto ON M5A 3R6
T: 416 603 2626
F: 416 603 2620
E: info@juliemgallery.com
www.juliemgallery.com
Join us Sept 22 for the opening reception, featuring an unforgettable painting performance by this exciting New York artist!
Miriam Cabessa’s Canadian debut “in her wake” complements an impressive CV, including representing Israel at the ‘97 Venice Biennale.
Cabessa paints using the movement of her body, her hands, simple objects, and pieces of fabric, guided by rhythmic meditative breathing. During the performance, she will work on multiple large canvases. Synching movement with breathing & heartbeat, Cabessa will share her signature technique of dragging objects & fabric over washes of oils or graphite. Patterned, stunning, haptic & complex describe these Slow Action Paintings & Drawings. Using oil on linen or masonite or powdered graphite and turpentine on paper, Cabessa creates surface wash that is sensitive to her touch in the same way that photographic paper is sensitive to light. The image is always created by exposing negative spaces: pulling or scraping paint aside to heighten the contrast of her compositions. Markmaking, for Cabessa, is in fact the kinetic subtraction, wiping, and blurring of pigment—making the relationship between the art and the artist very intimate. The pressure, duration, and directionality of each gesture is analogous to both automatic writing and mantra. Cabessa has refined her haptic technique over the course of sixteen years.
The resulting paintings and drawings are focused abstract explorations of her own heartbeat and isoelectric line. They are the traces of movement that emerge from stillness; essentially they are drawings in light. These works are often characterized as feminine action paintings, or feminine abstracts. Critic John Yau writes that, “Cabessa’s composition is a record of a single, sustained and segmented gesture, a discrete performance.” Her artistic lineage includes Jackson Pollock, Pierre Soulages, and Yves Klein, while her paintings reflect a background in photography, and reference the alluvial sensuality of Robert Mapplethorpe.
In 2009 she was invited by the PULSE Art Fair to create a 24-foot painting on site, which underlined the performative nature of her works. Miriam Cabessa was also featured in an Israeli documentary film titled Dreamers featuring nine Israelis working in the Arts living in the United States. Cabessa is currently involved with several projects based in New York City, the Hamptons, and San Diego, as well as Milan, Italy and Tel Aviv.