The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum: Julia Rommel: Two Italians Six Lifeguards

Julia Rommel – Two Italians, Six Lifeguards

Two Italians, Six Lifeguards I think the processes involved in the painting in themselves mean as much or more than any reference value that the painting has. – Jasper Johns1

Two Italians, Six Lifeguards, the title of both Julia Rommel’s first solo museum exhibition and a large new painting, may seem unexpected for an artist who exclusively operates within the language of monochromatic abstraction. Her process-based paintings, which range in scope from over life size to head proportion, all have exquisitely worked surfaces that show off colors one would love to dive into, and bear titles that imply a poetic sensibility and an inherent knack for storytelling. Rommel frequently writes about her work in the first person; press releases for solo exhibitions are replaced with narratives about her underlying motivations in a biographical tenor. At The Aldrich, Rommel debuts seven paintings made especially for this exhibition—three body scale and four torso sized, all oils on linen—as well as several new works on paper. Alongside this new body of work hang five small paintings from 2010 to 2012, tracing the arc of Rommel’s journey.

The implication that her titles are the sole means to unleash the works’ meanings, that they may imply some hard true significance, is not only misleading and shortsighted, but also belies their inherent complexity and refined mystery. That being said, of course, we cannot disregard their certain specialness: the words are so pregnant with elegiac possibility, always thoughtfully chosen after the work is completed. This concern with a condition of actuality is evident in Rommel’s choices, from the offbeat, Big Soda or Tofu Blackout; to the personal tribute, Jasper or Uncle Ian; as well as commemorations, Yuri’s Pool; and impressions, Mother Superior. Together, they emanate from recollections of places Rommel has traveled (Day with 7 Walks) and people she’s admired (Spaghetti in bed (Roy)). Like the stressed appearance of her paintings, showing crinkles, scratches, blemishes, scrapes, and depressions—evident scars that emote a humanistic condition, as well as an emotive palette—they tell us stories, making us yearn to learn how and why they transpired. This is a process with a long history.

As the second oldest of four children, Rommel remembers the “women of my house...always there... even on the walls....” Rommel’s mother is a painter, and her watercolors of her three daughters formed a lasting impression: “Our faces were interchangeable once translated into the medium, her translation of her world...this is what art is, this is what women are.” 2 Rommel grew up in in Salisbury, Maryland, and spent every summer through college with her family at the Delaware shore. Looking back, she recounts the terrifying and exhilarating period spent swimming and water skiing in the Atlantic, it was the ocean’s “full submersion I wanted...that soft, shapeless glob.”3 These were impressionable times that left an indelible imprint on Rommel’s visual memory. She even dedicated her first solo exhibition to the Mid-Atlantic state; mounted in New York in 2010, it featured an eponymously titled moody grey monochrome.

Rommel moved to New York in 2005 after completing her MFA at American University in Washington, DC. During those early years in New York, Rommel filled her days working for other artists, mostly stretching their paintings, developing thin, muscular arms and nerve-damaged fingers. This very physical and mechanical studio work influenced the course upon which she would embark. These

Healthy Breakfast, 2015. Courtesy of the artist and Bureau, New York

routine actions over intensive periods evolved into an artistic practice centered on machine-like, almost involuntary motions. It was this very propensity for manual rhythmic actions and a desire to “work. [To] try not to think ”4 that evolved into the defining feature of a Rommel painting, a propensity for building with color.

Rommel spends months on her paintings, working on several at a time, all in various stages of being.5 Her deliberate and intensive choreography involves long periods of buildups and breakdowns across the surfaces—she stretches, primes, gessoes, sands, paints, wipes, paints, sands, paints, folds, paints, sometimes cuts, removes or replaces element(s), paints, and so on. During this extensive process, Rommel removes the worked linens from the stretcher bars, stretching and re-stretching them numerous times over the course of their unfolding, so they are always intimately connected to their edges. After the physical wrangling of layering and effacing, her works reflect dozens of manipulations and numerous reincarnations. The traces of her maneuvers are left behind, a marching line of staple holes, the exposure of underlying colors, the ghostly impressions left by absent stretcher bars, the naked areas of untouched linen, as well as color bleeds, wrinkles, creases, and the bunching up of thickly painted corners; several paintings are contained in one completed work.

As with a haiku, Rommel’s seemingly accessible surfaces belie their enigmatic intricacy. Created via a laborious maneuvering of expunging and overlaying, the compositions reveal and disguise a history of choices and decisions, giving the paintings a rhythm and expression not unlike a lifecycle. Rommel devised this method of working, which she refers to as her “tool building,” as a means to “keep my own signature away.”6 These “tools”—paper towels, sandpaper, staples, and stretcher bars—are common, everyday materials for a painter, items she could find lying around the studio. As she enumerates, “every time I need a mark, I have to build the tool for making that mark: mostly stretcher bars to create a relief, sometimes a pillow of paper towels or just the painting folded back and stapled to itself.”7 This allows her to eliminate a tendency towards a direct form of painterly expressionism, using a calibrated series of rudimentary and repetitive actions over time, allowing her to “forget the painting is something that came from me, [so] I become a better judge.” 8 In other words, Rommel sees her role as more editorial, picking and choosing the areas she would like to highlight, exploit, or cover up, using a mediated

Relatives, 2015. Courtesy of the artist and Bureau, New York

system of activated layering that enables an energetic transference of sustained activity to occur with and within the completion of the work, imparting it with a deeper underlying tension.

These continuous stretches of time-consuming toil changed Rommel physically, giving her the “broad, veiny, hands of a bricklayer with weak, lady-like wrists.” 9 This is not alarming when one realizes how the scale of these works has grown in the last two years. Since Rommel first began experimenting with this process in 2010, the work has evolved into an exhaustive and endurance-based tussle, as paintings move around the studio—propped up, lying flat on worktables, or stapled to studio walls—in a dance that is rehearsed over and over again. As they are rotated around the room, it is their constant flux that ultimately gives them their singular vitality.

Interestingly, Rommel only began exhibiting her drawings in 2015. They read like studies, their rectilinear centers echoing the forms of her paintings; always floating in the center of the paper, they look to be leaning or hanging within a snug interior. Their edges are outlined, shaded, blurred or

smudged, and appear like portals, perhaps doors or windows, bestowing on them an inner dimension.

The process behind the drawings echoes the paintings, as they, too, are based on a superimposing of layers; but here the gestures are small and handmade, looser and more expressive, involving materials that offer a variety of consistencies and textures. A recent suite of drawings, Untitled (New Hampshire) (2015), completed while Rommel was a resident at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire last spring, incorporates many different materials—Conté, color pencil, chalk, gouache, charcoal—and several flaunt a rounded form, a curvilinear contour that embraces or enfolds a box-like shape in the center. The drawings at The Aldrich move in an even more sensual direction, revealing a belly or bulge-like shadow, peeking out from rectilinear blocks of lilac or tan. One drawing, in particular, features a charcoal scribble, partially erased and smeared, a suggestive inwardness released.

Rommel’s paintings oscillate between cool and warm palettes, color fields of denim blues, sullen greys, creamy whites, salmon pinks, and citrus hues. But it comes as no surprise that she has declared blue to be her favorite color.10 Over the years many works have favored the hue—in particular those made between 2010 and 2012—including several of those on view at The Aldrich. Their monochromatic palettes span a hyper-iridescent royal blue (WBEZ) to a stern naval blue (Pilgrimage to the Snow Capped West) to a deep-water blue (Minnow); St. Francis (2011), offers just a suggestion of the sapphire, as if it was intentionally blanched. Rommel employed oil and bleach to create this effect; the linen resembles a timeworn scroll or rag, as if the stains point to a miraculous incident. Other paintings, like Green Hills of Africa (2013), Yellow Afternoon (2013,) and Life Jacket (2014) show the true color range of Rommel, with surfaces from which their titles reverberate: sun-baked, saffron-hot, scorched earthen clay, luminous lemon sunrays, and a blazing neon-orange emergency floatation device.

Around 2013, Rommel’s paintings began to move away from a strictly monochromatic palette into a slightly looser color array, with an increasing number of superimpositions. This made her moves across the linen, like color eclipses, more striking, enhancing the intensity within the composition. For instance, in The Staten Island Ferry Disaster (2013), an icy white floats inside the painting’s center, but at its edges siren oranges, thundercloud greys, and dusky blacks warn of impending doom. As Rommel incorporated more varying layers of color, her work also expanded in reach. One of the largest paintings in The Aldrich’s exhibition, Moroccan Boyfriend (2015), 86 x 72 inches, composed of soft greens and blues, offers tribute to Henri Matisse, and especially the paintings he completed during his two inspirational visits to Tangiers in 1912 and 1913. The harmonious shifts and switches of pleats and bands of cerulean, cobalt, blue-gray, ultramarine, and dark blue that happen at the perimeter, the hyperactive corners and edges that open up onto a halcyon teal center, make this work a standout.

Taken in concert, Rommel’s stressed surfaces, with their bends, folds, cracks, frayed edges, and staple holes, have a perspicacity that connects them to the viewer—and the viewer to the works—in various stages of being and becoming.

Amy Smith-Stewart, curator Julia Rommel was born in 1980 in Salisbury, Maryland, and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Pre-Baby,2015. Courtesy of the artist and Bureau, New York

Pre-Baby (detail),2015

Untitled (Greenpoint/Gowanus 9/4/15), 2015.

Courtesy of the artist and Bureau, New York

1.

2.

Kelly Keegan and Kristin Lister, “A Shifting Focus: Process and Detail in Tennyson and Near the Lagoon,” in James Rondeau and Douglas Druik, Jasper Johns: Gray (Yale University Press: New

6.

Rommel, p. 29.

7.

Rommel, p. 29

Haven, 2008), p. 162.

8.

Rommel, p. 15.

Julia Rommel, Around Woman (New York: Bureau,

9.

Rommel, p. 12.

2015), p. 29.

3.

Rommel, p. 55.

4.

Rommel, p. 12.

5.

For the past two years, in preparation for The Aldrich’s exhibition, I have visited Rommel’s studio several times and have witnessed numerous works in various stages of development.

10. Conversation with the artist in her Brooklyn studio, June 3, 2015.

Works in the Exhibition All dimensions h x w x d in inches

Delaware, 2010 Oil and bleach on linen 9x8 Private collection, New York St. Francis, 2011 Oil and bleach on linen 14 x 10 Private collection, New York Minnow, 2012 Oil on linen 11 1/2 x 10 Collection of Laura Belgray and Steven Eckler Pilgrimage to SnowCapped West, 2012 Oil on linen 17 x 16 Collection of Barbara and Howard Morse, New York WBEZ, 2012 Oil and bleach on linen 18 x 13 1/2 Private collection, New York

Greetings from Uruguay, 2015 Oil on linen 24 x 23 1/2 Healthy Breakfast, 2015 Oil on linen 18 x 13 1/2 Moroccan Boyfriend, 2015 Oil on linen 86 x 72 Pre-Baby, 2015 Oil on linen 68 x 52 Relatives, 2015 Oil on linen 16 1/2 x 12 1/2

Untitled (Greenpoint/ Gowanus 9/9/15), 2015 Gouache, charcoal, graphite on paper 12 x 9 Untitled (Greenpoint/ Gowanus 9/25/15), 2015 Gouache, charcoal, colored pencil, chalk pastel on paper 12 x 9 Untitled (Greenpoint/ Gowanus 9/26/15), 2015 Gouache, charcoal, colored pencil, graphite, chalk pastel on paper 12 x 9

Two Italians, Six Lifeguards, 2015 Oil on linen 76 3/4 x 66 3/4

Untitled (Greenpoint/ Gowanus 9/27/15), 2015 Gouache, charcoal, colored pencil, chalk pastel on paper 12 x 9

Untitled (Greenpoint/ Gowanus 9/4/15), 2015 Gouache, charcoal, chalk pastel on paper 12 x 9

Vitamins, 2015 Oil on linen 17 1/2 x 13 1/4

Courtesy of the artist and Bureau, New York

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum Founded by Larry Aldrich in 1964, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum is dedicated to fostering the work of innovative artists whose ideas and interpretations of the world around us serve as a platform to encourage creative thinking. It is the only museum in Connecticut devoted to contemporary art, and throughout its fifty-year history has engaged its community with thoughtprovoking exhibitions and education programs.

Board of Trustees Eric G. Diefenbach, Chairman; Linda M. Dugan, Vice-Chairman; William Burback, Treasurer/ Secretary; Diana Bowes; Chris Doyle; Annabelle K. Garrett; Georganne Aldrich Heller, Honorary Trustee; Michael Joo; Neil Marcus; Kathleen O’Grady; Lori L. Ordover; Martin Sosnoff, Trustee Emeritus; John Tremaine Alyson Baker, Executive Director Larry Aldrich (1906–2001), Founder

Cover Julia Rommel, Moroccan Boyfriend, 2015 Courtesy of the artist and Bureau, New York

258 Main Street Ridgefield, CT 06877 203.438.4519 aldrichart.org

Julia Rommel: Two Italians, Six Lifeguards Curated by Amy Smith-Stewart November, 15, 2015, through April 3, 2016 The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

The Aldrich, in addition to significant support from its Board of Trustees, receives contributions from many dedicated friends and patrons. Major funding for Museum programs and operations has been provided by the Department of Economic and Community Development, Connecticut Office of the Arts; the National Endowment for the Arts; the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation; the Leir Charitable Foundations; The Goldstone Family Foundation; the Anne S. Richardson Fund; and Fairfield Fine Art.

Generous support for Julia Rommel: Two Italians, Six Lifeguards is provided by Patrons Circle contributors Jennifer and Claude Amadeo and Sascha Bauer; Bureau, New York; Liz Goldman; and Serge and Ian Krawiecki Gazes.