Perrotin New York is pleased to present a solo exhibition by New York-based artist Julia von Eichel. There is a tectonic quality to Julia von Eichel’s practice. Shifts remain commonplace and changes are expected. In her new exhibition, titled Fathom, she inhabits a virgin territory in her 25-year exploration of material alchemy: colorful oil pastel on graphite. Across the show’s works—most of which are applied on wooden panels—mauve, yellow, green, and blue hues house slightly recognizable traits of von Eichel’s hand.
Each line sprouts from her fingertip which she conducts not unlike a paintbrush. The oil lends its swift chemistry to energetic marks in a bold palette. A rhythmic order—even a corporal mathematic—commands each juxtaposition which is sometimes reticent and other times, brazen. “I like to work with materials that will have a resistance and a life of their own,” the artist says.
The paintings breathe von Eichel's every touch—subtle pats or determined jabs— each attempt yields a chromatic drop within a sea of kaleidoscopic splendor. The light cuts through the shadows to shine through the crannies marked by the artist’s only tool, her fingers. Windows or wells, each painting carves out a volcanic promise, a quest to expand the limits of what a painting or sculpture might be. A sculptor for decades, she dabbles with the definitions of both practices and alchemizes them on two dimensions yet under the influence of the third. “I use my hand in the same way a sculptor does,” the artist says. The immediacy conveys an awareness, an all-encompassing unity with the flatness of the graphite.
While Julia's newest body of work is two dimensional, it reveals her understanding of depth and volume, drawn from her sculptural practice. Free forms extend inwards and outwards from the surface, pulsating a natural energy with both molecular and macro immensity.
After three decades in the city, a new life in Upstate New York casts its colors and habits onto the artist’s process. A studio with eight windows brings in vistas of the commanding Stissing Mountain and unparalleled sunsets. In the garden, a plethora of flora—think wisteria, Russian sage, and hydrangea—grow, gushing chromatic fascinations onto the drafting table. From the nocturnal azure to the fiery dawn, the day’s journey inhabits the paintings; however, a non-linear appreciation of time and seasons carves out a kinetic landscape. Circularities and twisters occupy generous territories, claiming, gently, lands of mercurial foundations. Charged with a chromatic electricity, each painting contains a rhythm of mystery, only solvable through each onlooker’s curiosity. Kinetic for some and serene for others, they simultaneously hum and roar, deafeningly loud for a second only to be followed by an utter silence. The motifs contain a harmonious vitality that is reminiscent of the subtle sways of a breathing body or the barely recognizable waves on placid water. They demand attention, yet they do so through a humble spring vigor in which opulence comes off as generosity.
Explosive yet contained, the lush hues bubble and swirl on the graphite’s hospitable and tactile nature. von Eichel flirts with colors—the enigmatic Paynes’ Gray or the inviting magenta—with a whimsical appetite for the outcome. Like a conductor, however, she delivers gestures of awareness in which caution and embrace coalesce. "Fathom" grasps this duality. A confirmation of understanding, the word embodies a further fascination with knowledge, a deeper plunge into the genes of a discovery. To fathom is to understand, only wetter and more devoted. Fathoming the show’s paintings is an adventurous feat: while calmness and tumult are inseparable, each mark radiates an uncharted decision awaiting comprehension. von Eichel prompts us to seep into the depths of each composition where, deep down, lies a wealth of unraveling.
Now is timely to recall the other meaning of "fathom", which is a measurement of length that is around six feet, commonly used for assessing the depth of a mass of water. The unity in the word’s two connotations is a search through mystery, and in addition to a desire to fully penetrate the truth, they equally cherish the unknown’s ineffable charm. von Eichel commits to a similar journey of gauging places in which colors and her own corporality guide her through. In discovery of their beautifully unpredictable accordance, she unravels all that the tangible and the ethereal have in common, not unlike grasping a meaning and appreciating how unfathomable it may be.
- Osman Can Yerebakan
Née en 1974 à St Gallen, Suisse
Habite et travaille à Brooklyn, USA
Julia von Eichel was born in Saint Gallen, Switzerland in 1974 and attended the Corcoran School of the Arts in DC and The Art Institute in Chicago before graduating from the School of Visual Arts in 1996. Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions at Perrotin, September, Lucien Terras, Sperone Westwater, Lesley Heller, Sarah Meltzer, Winston Wächter, the DeCordova Museum, and the Children’s Museum of the Arts, among many others. Her work is held in multiple private collections, including Goldman Sachs and Microsoft, and has been featured in publications from Artillery Magazine to the Wall Street Journal, from the New York Times to The New Yorker. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and Gallatin, NY.
Julia von Eichel has challenged existing modes of technique in every phase of her career. She considers herself a sculptor, even when working in two dimensions—the manipulation of material, with the aim of expressing inner turmoil, manifests itself at times in tangles of string, structures of silk and snapped dowels, or planes of oil paint etched with a razor. Her hands are her preferred tools: sewing, burnishing, tying, or sliding color as if it were an object, not just a hue. A constant in her decades of exploration has been the tension between the many emotions that battle one another under the surface of existence, the barely contained and unsayable contradictions at the heart of being human. Her current work, part sorrow in their somber tones and part joy in their bursts of bright colors, are her answers to all the frustration, pain, catharsis and connection of the past few years.
À propos de l'artiste
