VICKY COLOMBET
EARTH
VICKY COLOMBET
EARTH
October 22 - December 19, 2014
“EARTH”
Nena Tsouti-Schillinger, 2014
I have to render myself to what surrounds me…. I have to morph into a union with the clouds and the rocks, in
order to be what I am.
Caspar David Friedrich
The home page of Vicky Colombet’s website greets
us with a photograph of the artist as a traditional
manual laborer. The photograph has a dramatic
immediacy. Working on her Glass Wall (2005-12), a
permanent site-specific installation, Colombet is seen
dressed with a laborer’s full body white suit standing
on a ladder while drawing and cutting vinyl around
an elevated courtyard pool at the Villa Nurbs near
Barcelona, Spain.
A collaboration with the Spanish architect of this
unconventional house, Enric Ruiz-Geli, Colombet’s
mural, as she herself stated, “was inspired by an aerial
view of the real topography of canals, ocean and sky
surrounding the house, which is conceived as a linear
landscape, folded onto the site in an ascending spiral.
The project evolved from a painting laminated between curved glass of 150 X 12 feet that surrounds
the pool in the middle of the house and opens to
the sky through a sandblasted glass.” Certainly the
process recalls Land art and Robert Smithson who
once said “Instead of putting a work of art on some
land, some land is put into the work of art.”
While Colombet is best known as an abstract painter of reductive poetic canvases, over the years
mirror and sandblasted glass have found their ways
into her repertoire, which, in keeping with her work
in other mediums (photographs and digital prints),
include depictions of severely reduced landscapes.
In her Fibonacci Table (2011), for instance, the
etched glass forms on the tondo evoke allusions to
natural systems. It is also interesting to mention that
the seven bronze legs of the table are numbered
following the Fibonacci sequence—after the greatest
Italian mathematician of the Middle Ages. Each subsequent number on the table leg is the sum of the
previous two (1, 1, 2, 3). This mathematic sequence
applies to nature as well as landscape.
But nevertheless, it is the act of painting that remains
the absolute center of Colombet’s life. Often
topographical in character, her abstract pieces utilize
systematic arrangements of line, color and space.
Visually evocative and perceptually seductive, her
densely layered canvases are at once organic and
highly structured.
Colombet works in series--one series evolves into
another, which in turn evolves into yet another. Or
to quote Robert Morris when he was asked how he
came up with the idea of working in series “I think
Wittgenstein’s term ‘family resemblance’ might be just
as good or better than the notion of ‘series.’ ” Inspired
by the change of seasons in her upstate New York
countryside studio, the artist began working on her
new “down to earth” pieces entitled Earth in early
2014.
As with her earlier works, Asian philosophy is one of
the important threads that run through this new series,
as nature appears evocative and elusive rather than
descriptive—all representational elements having been
removed. The artist explains that she is looking for
this split second where we don’t know what we are
looking at—to free the viewer of preconceived ideas
“idées toute faites.” This idea is further emphasized
in a number of her Earth paintings as she has deliberately left some areas of the canvas blank in order to
“enhance” the fragility, the disappearance of what we
see. In some instances as much as 30% of the canvas
remains void, yet the entire painting is suffused with the
sense of a “mist” recalling landscapes of the Chinese
Song Dynasty masters.
Colombet has been recognized for her commitment to
process and her ability to create paintings in which the
surfaces, although from distance seem textural and tactile, are in fact seductively smooth, strangely matte, and
remarkably fluid (because she is adding alkyd, mineral
spirit and wax to her oil paint). Using the fold marks
mostly—the smallest representation of the world as
explained in The Fold by the French philosopher Gilles
Deleuze in his interpretation of the theory of “monads”
by the German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz—the
canvas is further manipulated to form crevices, which
the artist then “follows” with precision with soft brushes revealing rather than concealing the characteristics
of the surface, while in the process she is further removing the traces of the brushstroke.
However, unlike her earlier series, in the Earth large
paintings, the artist is working on raw linen canvas prepared with rabbit skin glue. The brown canvas being
a metaphor of the earth—earth pigments/particules/
earth.
Colombet uses a variety of colors to create her
dazzling works, which she tends to change from
series to series. In her Earth pieces, which are nearly
monochromatic, she uses a range of black and white
pigments as well as indigo, turquoise, and lapis-lazuli
blue. But in “Earth Series“#1313, 2014 a strikingly
large canvas, the predominant shade is red ochre, a
color which she has never used before. Asked why she
chose red color, the artist replied that it suggests the
red ochre of the soil of the South of France--alluding
to the iron-rich landscape of that area.
Creating astonishing visual experiences, the artist’s
works invite closer examination of and larger thinking
about the natural world, which surrounds us. Abstract
to the casual glance, one might even say that perhaps her landscapes are not landscapes at all but are
instead states of mind, a state of dreamlike vision. A
patient observer however, is rewarded, as with time,
Vicky Colombet’s “canvas-landscapes” will slowly open
up, revealing forms and colors which seem to evoke
natural systems—a painting has secrets; a spectator has
questions. The conversation begins.
“Earth Series” #1311, 2014
“Earth Series” Triptych #1304;1305;1306, 2014
Above: Triptych detail, panel #1304
Right: Triptych detail, panel #1305
Triptych detail, panel #1306
“Earth Series” #1313, 2014
“Earth Series” Triptych #1307; 1308; 1309, 2014
Top: Triptych detail, panel #1307
Bottom: Triptych detail, panel #1308
“Earth Series” #1315, 2014
“Earth Series” #1314, 2014,
Top: “Hudson series” 1, 2013-2014
Bottom: “Hudson series“ 2, 2013-2014
Right: “Hudson series“ 3, 2013-2014
“Earth Series” #1310, 2014
“Hudson series” 4, 2013-2014
Right: “Hudson series” 5, 2013-2014
CHECKLIST
“Earth Series” #1311
2014, 62” x 62”
Oil, pigments, alkyd, wax on
canvas.
“Earth Series” #1315
2014, 36” x 36”
Oil, pigments, alkyd, wax on
canvas.
“Earth Series” #1310
2014, 78” x 78”
Oil, pigments, alkyd, wax on
canvas.
“Earth Series” Triptych
#1304,1305,1306
2014, 7 13/16” x 8 11/16”
Oil, pigments, alkyd, wax on
canvas.
“Earth Series” #1314
2014, 76” x 60”
Oil, pigments, alkyd, wax on
canvas.
“Hudson Series” 4
2013-2014, 9” x 14”
Digital print on vellum.
“Earth Series” #1313
2014, 78” x 78”
Oil, pigments, alkyd, wax on
canvas.
“Earth Series” Triptych
2014, #1307,1308,1309
5 1/2” x 8 11/16”
Oil, pigments, alkyd, wax on
canvas.
“Hudson Series” 1
2013-2014, 9” x 14”
Digital print on vellum.
“Hudson Series” 2
2013-2014, 9” x 14”
Digital print on vellum.
“Hudson Series” 3
2013-2014, 9” x 14”
Digital print on vellum.
“Hudson Series” 5
.
2013-2014,
9” x 14”
Digital print on vellum.
Solo Exhibitions
2014
2009
2008
2007
2006
2004
2003
2002
2000
1999
1997
1995
1994
1993
1991
1990
1989
1988
1987
1986
1985
“Earth“, Christian Duvernois Landscape/Gallery, New York, NY
Dutko Gallery, Paris, France | Bleu Acier, Tampa, FL
“Vantage Points” Evo Gallery, Santa Fe,NM
“Difference and Repetition” Haim Chanin Fine Arts, New York, NY | Fidel Balaguer Gallery,
Barcelona, Spain (catalogue)
Evo Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
Haim Chanin Fine Arts, New York, NY (catalogue) | Evo Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
Meserve-Coale Gallery, Greenwich, CT
Evo Gallery, Santa Fe,NM
Zographia Gallery, Bordeaux, France
J. Guhl gallery, Montreux, Switzerland
Chateau de Servieres, Marseille, France
Alain Margaron Gallery, Paris, France
De la Gare Gallery, Bonnieux, France
Busch Gallery, Berlin, Germany | J.Guhl Gallery, Montreux, Switzerland
Busch Gallery, Berlin, Germany | J. Guhl Gallery, Montreux, Switzerland
Rolf Wah Gallery, Paris, France | Corinne Timsit Gallery, San Juan, Puerto Rico
Pavillon Ledoyen, Paris, France | Corinne Timsit Gallery, Paris, France
A.O Gallery, Antibes, France | Corinne Timsit Gallery, Paris, France
Mossa Gallery/Museum of Nice, Nice, France
Corinne Timsit Gallery, Paris, France
Excentric Gallery, Liege, Belgium
Group Exhibitions
2014
2014
2013
2012
2011
“Distilled” Bernard Jacobson Gallery, New York, NY
“Sempre Natura”, Christian Duvernois Landscape/Gallery, New York, NY
“A Year in Preview” Christian Duvernois Landscape/Gallery, New York, NY
“Coherent Surface, Radiant Light” Bernard Jacobson Gallery, New York, NY | “Of White” Nuartlink,
Westport, CT
“Design is Design is not Design” Gwangju Design Biennale Curated by Chinese artist Ai WeiWei and
Korean architect Seung H-Sang. Korea“Cumulus Momentum” project, La Cité Radieuse/Le Corbusier,
Marseille, France
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996
1993
1992
1988
1986
WAAM Museum, Woodstock, NY
Art Paris, Haim Chanin Fine Arts, New York, NY | Haim Chanin Fine Arts, New York, NY | Jean
Jacques Dutko Gallery, Paris, France
Water & Dreams, Galerie Kamchatka, Paris, France (catalogue) Evo Gallery, Santa Fe, NM | Art Paris,
Haim Chanin Fine Arts, New York, NY | Chicago
Art Fair, Bleu Acier, Tampa, FL
St Petersburg Museum, Florida | “Black and White Abstractions” Haim Chanin Fine Arts, New York,
NY | “Drawing on the Wrong Side of the Brain” Curated by Lyle Rexer, Haim Chanin Fine Arts, New
York, NY | ARCO, Haim Chanin Fine Arts & Artecite, Spain | Art Paris, Haim Chanin Fine Arts &
Artecite, Paris, France | Girona Contemporary Art Fair, Fidel Balaguer Gallery & Artecite, Spain |
Toronto Contemporary Art Fair, Caroline Dimnik Contemporary, Canada | “Entre Chien et
Loup” Bleu Acier, Tampa, FL “Bridge” Miami Art Fair, Bleu Acier, Tampa, FL (catalogue) | EFA
Open Studios, New York, NY
Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY | Contemporary Art Fair New York, Evo Gallery, NM | Istan
bul Art Fair, Artecite, Turkey EFA Open Studios, New York, NY
“Wind”, Haim Chanin Fine Arts, New York, NY (catalogue) | San Francisco Art Fair, Evo Gallery |
Chicago Art fair, Evo Gallery | Art Paris Art Fair, Haim Chanin Fine Arts/Artecite, France
Chicago Art Fair, Evo Gallery | San Francisco Art Fair, Evo Gallery| “Works on Paper”, Evo Gallery,
Santa Fe | Art Santa Fe, Evo Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
Evo Gallery, Santa Fe, NM | Matarasso Gallery, Nice, France Affordable Art Fair New York, Evo Gal
lery
Original Gallery, Nice, France
Nicholas Davies Gallery, New York, NY
Nicholas Davies Gallery, New York, NY | Astarte Gallery, Madrid, Spain
Chateau de Servieres, Marseille, France
SAGA, Climats Gallery, Paris, France | Verena Hoffer Gallery, Barcelona, Spain | De la Gare Gallery,
Bonnieux, France | Carre d’Art Saint Anne, Montpellier, France
J. Guhl Gallery, Montreux, Switzerland | Alain Margaron Gallery, Paris, France
Rene Metras Gallery, Barcelona, Spain
Miami Art Fair, Corinne Timsit Gallery, Miami, FL | Kladno Museum, Prague, Czech Republic
Art Junction, A.O Gallery, Nice, France
Schwabisch-Gmund Museum, Germany
Videos/Films:
2011-2014 “The Glass Wall” Documentary by Joan Freeman, Caliban Productions, Santa Monica, CA | TVE
“Continuara” Barcelona, Spain. 2012 | TVE “Continuara” Barcelona, Spain. 2007 | CUNY TV & PBS “Canapé”, New York, NY 2004 | Esec, Cinema School of Paris: “Ce qui permet le regard”, France. 2001 | Art
Video: Berlin Direction, Germany. 1993 | TV 5 Paris, France. 1992
Grants/Awards/Residencies:
2014 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant | 2011-2013 Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studio Program,
New York | 2004-2011 Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studio Program, New York | 2001 Adolph and
Esther Gottlieb Foundation Prize | 2000 DRAC, Languedoc et Roussillon, France
Collaborative Projects:
2013-2014 “a-r-o-s-e” Collaborative Project with the Landscape architect Lily Jencks, for a large Public glass
sculpture/garden, in Paris (Rubis Mécénat Cultural Fund) | 2013 The Smithsonian: Invitation to participate
in a design competition for a 21st century landmark for the interior of the spectacular Grand Salon of the
Renwick Gallery, Washington, DC | 2012 “Forbidden City” Collaborative Project with Christian Duvernois
Gardens, Glass Tondo etched for a Chinese Garden in New York City | 2005-2012 “Villa Nurbs” Collaborative Project with the architect Enric Ruiz-Geli. Monumental Etched Glass, Barcelona, Spain | “Cumulus
Momentum” project, collaboration with the artist Lucile Bertrand at La Cité Radieuse/Le Corbusier, Marseille,
France.
Colombet has shown internationally in galleries and museums. Her work is in major private and public collections in Europe and the United States.
Bibliography
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
“Coherent Surface, Radiant Light”, Art News, New York. September 2012
“Un nuage créatif s’accroche à la Cité radieuse”, Marseille, La Provence, June 2011
“At Home With Town & Country” Sarah Medford, Hearst Books, 2010
“Do It Today: Terres De Brume, Creative Loafing, Tampa Dec 2009
“On the Radar: Vicky Colombet: Terres de Brume / A New Geography at Bleu Acier”, Creative
Loafing, Tampa, Oct 2009
Marché de l’Art, Carré Rive Gauche, Paris Journal des Arts Mai-Juin 2008
The New York Times Style Magazine - “Mood Swing - Design Spring 2008”
Dutko et l’Île aux trésors, Paris, Elle Décoration, Novembre 2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2000
1999
1997
1993
1989
“Vicky Colombet at Haim Chanin Fine Arts”,artforum.com’s “Critics’ Picks”,T. Nikki Cesare, Sept
2007
Lyle Rexer, “On Not Knowing Where to Stand”, Galeria Fidel Balaguer, Barcelona, Spain. April 2007
“Inspiracion Fotografica”, La Vanguardia, Barcelona, Spain. April 2007
“Vicky Colombet, Fidel Balaguer”, Montse Frisach, Avui,. April 2007
“Vertigens visuals I oscil-lacions tàctils”. Bonart,. April 2007
“Vicky Colombet a la Galeria Fidel Balaguer”, Bonart. May 2007
“Starting all Over”, Julie V.Iovine, Town and Country, USA. February 2007
“Santa Fe Preview” Sarah S. King, Art in America, USA. June/July 2006
“’Art of Conversation”, St. Petersburgh Museum of Fine Arts, Megan Voeller, Creative Loafing
Tampa, Tampa, USA. June 2006
“Vicky Colombet at Haim Chanin” Jonathan Goodman, Art in America, USA. February 2005
Nena Tsouti-Schilinger, “Nothing to see from the Ground” (catalog) Haim Chanin Fine Art , New
York--Evo Gallery, Santa Fe
“Simplicity and Complexity”, Dottie Indyke, Albuquerque Journal, USA. November 2004
Vicky Colombet ou la géographie de la sérénité. Virginie Poitrasson, FIAF: Le magazine, New York,
USA. September 2004
Colombet’s Iconography of Zen, L.P. Streitfeld, Art, The Advocate & Greenwich Time, Connecticut,
USA. May 2004
“Vicky Colombet at Evo” Sarah S. King, Art in America, USA. July 2003
“Urban Landscapes”, The Magazine, Santa Fe, USA. September 2002
“Conjectures sur l’oeuvre d’une peintre” -- Une peinture de l’en deçà du visible, José R. dos Santos,
Lecture: “Art and Science”, Evora University, Portugal. August 2000
“Origines”, Clo Caldairou, Nice Matin, France. March 2000
“Pour être une rivière qui coule”, Mireille Schnorf, La Presse Riviera/Chablais, Suisse. October 1999
“Le temps qui fuit et ne revient pas”, Vevey Hebdo, Suisse. October 1999
“El silenci I la informacio”, Catalina Serra, El Pais, Barcelona, Spain. June 1997
“Ces paysages où les yeux se posent”, La Marseillaise, France. May 1997
“Quatre visions abstraites hantent le carré Sainte-Anne”, Lise Ott, Midi Libre, France. November
1997
“Abstractions au Carré Sainte-Anne”, Lise Ott, Midi Libre, France. October 1997
“Les Musées” , La Provence, France. September 1997
“Quelque part, une âme…” , Vevey Hebdo, Suisse. December 1993
“Dialogues de l’eau et des pierres”, Mireille Schnorf, La Presse
Riviera/Chablais, Suisse. November 1993
“Vicky Colombet ou la peinture de la fluidité”. Sandrine Frey, Eveil Culturel, Suisse. October 1993
Christiane Rochefort. (catalog) Corinne Timsit Gallery, Paris, France.
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