sylvain malfroy-camine at david klein birmingham
Scherzo
Scherzo features Malfroy-Camine’s most recent paintings on a grand scale, with a palette reminiscent of the Impressionists and Pointillists of the early 20th century. The work also reveals a relationship to Larry Poons’ colorfield paintings of the early 1960s with their painterly dots and ellipses.
The artist notes: “Scherzo is a kind of musical composition that also means ‘joke’ in Italian. In titling the show this way, I hope to imply music in the work shown, but also to lightly question the amusing notion of music’s relationship to painting, since paintings are notoriously silent.”
Madame Bovary’s distinct sides are connected by dabs of paint that migrate from a brighter palette on the right to subdued on the left. A viewer becomes absorbed in this large-scale, seductive interpretation of a character’s tightrope walk between convention and freedom, sanity and madness.
Your prescription doesn’t need adjusting. Malfroy-Camine’s blurred composition is softer in the middle and deepens as it reaches the edges. Mark-making isn’t as liberal as the other pictures allowing this one’s buttery feel.
Cauldron organizes and defines shapes in a much sharper coloration. Evenly dispersed Poons-like marks seem to radiate from the center outward accompanied by a few energetic squiggles. Vibrato perhaps?
One of my favorite exercises to impose on unsuspecting students is to paint sound. It can be anything from contemporary music to a mosquito buzzing your ear on a hot summer evening. What does that sound look like? What color is it? Is it soft, sharp, annoying? Does it have a rhythm or is it random? These paintings illustrate variations in cadence from a light concerto to fully symphonic creating engaging abstractions that firmly hold a viewer’s attention.
“I make work improvisationally, allowing marks to build upon each other or fall into a din of chaos. I mix colors slowly on the palette, read the activity taking place in the painting, and deliberate my next moves as I decide where the painting ought to go. In this way, I don’t presuppose the painting, and allow it to move by some chance and by some choice, until it arrives into harbor, freshly painted, or dinged and dented…” –Sylvain Malfroy-Camine
On view through November 26th at David Klein Gallery 163 Townsend Birmingham
*images courtesy of David Klein Gallery
direct quote from gallery materials
SHOWS OPEN THIS WEEKEND
Brain Candy Monday the 21st only
Madame Bovary. Wow!