ROBERT MARCHESS AULT AMBIENT TREES OCTOBER 2015
BAU-XI GALLERY TORONTO
AMBIENT TREES As a student at Concordia University, Robert Marchessault ignored suggestions from his professors to follow his peers in painting abstraction, instead opting to learn—and contribute to—the “language” of landscape. This explicit disregard for the conventions of the contemporary would be what solidified for Marchessault not only an impressive and prolific 40 year long painting career, but a firm and respected place in the Canadian contemporary art community. For many, Marchessault’s paintings recall the pastoral scenes of the landscape genre, and evoke the technical skill of canonized artists like Baroque painter Claude Lorrain and English Romantic John Constable. But what separates Marchessault from this art historical tradition is his deep exploration of the tree and its landscape as archetype rather than as assertions of territory or purely idealized, Romantic space. Indeed, observable over Marchessault’s long career is a general turning upwards from land to sky, a re-orientation of perspective to include—and even privilege—empty space. It is precisely this love for space that for Marchessault becomes a vessel for meditative thought. The artist defends himself against any suggestion that painting trees repetitively signals “a dull, uninventive mind,” citing the work of Giorgio Morandi and others “who could find in a simple set of objects all that they needed to sustain them in their work.” This tireless exploration of a single subject paradoxically reveals Marchessault’s versatility; the tree—stripped of its literal associations and inscribed with its complex symbolic history—becomes a “vehicle” for interpretation, and a space for personal, political, environmental, and imaginative projects. This creative attitude underpins what is perhaps the most striking and poetic aspect of Marchessault’s work: the trees we see are imagined, hybrid species, painted from the artist’s memory, their surroundings equally constructed to create each dreamlike composition. Characteristic of his technique to date, Marchessault begins his process by applying layers of paint to a wood panel, only to strategically wipe it off with rags to create and build up texture. Recently, the artist has been experimenting with the smoothness of spray paint and the almost surreal, almost-abstract effects of bright, flat blue skies. His tree figures begin as swift, gestural lines of paint, with branches and foliage growing out of this initial abstraction as organically as nature itself, what Marchessault describes as “the way energy flows up and through a tree.” Together, these explorations lend a distinct, contemporary freshness to Marchessault’s recent work, and demonstrate the artist’s willingness to investigate the limits of his subject matter while maintaining what he describes as the ability of the tree to evoke “universal yet intensely personal” responses in the viewer. In all their simplicity, Marchessault’s paintings inspire complex levels of awareness, both mental and spatial. Ambient Trees is an exhibition of works that fuse representation and imagination to encourage abstract, ‘ambient’ thinking, to consider the essential relationships between a thing and its space, life and environment, time and geography, mind and body.
Cover: Jacardi, 2015, oil on panel, 60 x 48 inches, $15,400. Alquife, 2015, oil on panel, 48 x 54 inches, $13,700.
Iertua: The Good Summer, 2013, oil on panel, 54 x 48 inches, $13,700.
Vecchio Ulivo, 2015, oil on panel, 36 x 36 inches, $7,600.
High Point, 2015, oil on panel, 48 x 66 inches, $16,200.
The Bee Factory, 2015, oil on panel, 20 x 48 inches, $6,200.
Atlas, 2015, oil on panel, 30 x 30 inches, $5,900. Vertu, 2015, oil on panel, 30 x 30 inches, $5,900.
Adios Manassa, 2015, oil on panel, 44 x 40 inches, $10,600.
Kurfu, 2015, oil on panel, 24 x 24 inches, $4,800.
Ming, 2015, oil on panel, 24 x 24 inches, $4,800. Vientos-de-la-Tarde, 2015, oil on panel, 24 x 24 inches, $4,800.
Indus, 2015, oil on panel, 12 x 30 inches, $3,500.
Viola, 2015, oil on panel, 16 x 24 inches, $3,600. Vio, 2015, oil on panel, 17 x 16 inches, $3,500.
Sula, 2015, oil on panel, 24 x 16 inches, $3,600.
PiĂąon, 2015, oil on panel, 40 x 40 inches, $9,400.
The Blessing, 2015, oil on panel, 30 x 30 inches, $5,900.
Mai, 2015, oil on panel, 24 x 48 inches, $7,300.
Side Stream, 2015, oil on panel, 18 x 60 inches, $6,700.
Arial, 2015, oil on panel, 24 x 24 inches, $4,800.