Monica De Cardenas

Opening Saturday 21 July 2012, 6 pm

Exhibition: 21 July - 1 September 2012

The mountain chains unfolding in Michel Grillet's watercolors possess a floating lightness. In gradations of blue and grey darker silhouettes thrust themselves in front of the summits that seem to fade into the distance. The miniaturized panorama format suggests an endless, unobstructed landscape, but at the same time avoids providing a fixed reading. The flowing lines and coloured areas resemble the idea of a mountain much more than an actual mountain range. They are archetypal impressions, pictures of memories in the flow of time.

Since 30 years Grillet creates watercolors and ink drawings with a precise vocabulary, painting sky and mountains, water and stars, distilling the essence of the landscape, in order to put the elements into an ongoing dialogue with each other. With this he consciously creates a clear frame for himself, to pose questions about painting, landscape, picture and image without the intrusion of illusionary details. Grillet paints from memory, the remembered mountains become pure painterly events, which immediately make clear that a painting consisting of a combination of colors on a surface that, in its completely different reality, can only conditionally resemble what is represented. In their reduction to the essential, to calm and timeless presence, these landscapes, detached from the contingency of the world, make visible what lies beyond random appearances.