Paintings, the current summer show at Joyce Yahouda is a group show guest curated by Jean-Louis René, featuring the work of four young artists, Paul Hardy, Jean-François Lauda, Jenna Meyers and David Gagnon. All four work with paint, however in different ways.This show explores not only the possibility of painting, but also the conversations created when you place very different works next to each other. How do seemingly different pieces speak with each other?

Jean-François Lauda’s work are abstract watercolours on somerset paper. Using pale greens, blues, reds and purples Lauda explores lines and borders. The works look like he made lines of various widths and lengths with tape and painter around them. Displayed side by side, they explore where the paint can’t go rather than where it can. We think about the blank empty spaces as much as those that are painted – an experiment in negatives. On the other side of the room are Paul Hardy’s works. Hardy paints on a larger scale. Whereas Lauda’s biggest of lauda’s work is 30” x 22″, Hardy’s smallest is 60” x 48″. Using oil on canvas Hardy presents oil paint as both the medium and subject. History Painting is a play on the monochrome. Seafoam covers the entire canvas, with certain points revealing darker undertones. We see the various textures rather than a figurative scene. Hardy’s covered canvases reveal the blank spaces on Lauda’s pieces just as Lauda’s sparsely painted works highlight the heaviness found in oil paint.

In the second room are figurative works by Jenna Meyers and David Gagnon. While both are figurative painters, the two could not be more different. Meyers has childlike figures that verge on the grotesque while Gagnon paints still lifes that look like collages; pieces of paper taped on top of walls and inanimate objects. Gagnon excels in precision and delicate brushwork whereas Meyers explores alternate realities and how figures can be conveyed even when the paints drip into the other colours.

René has curated a show based on spontaneity, thinking about the works and practices individually then as a conversation between one another. How does the watercolor of Lauda converse with the still lifes of Gagnon? How does Gagnon precise work highlight the imprecision in Meyer’s work. How do Meyers pieces make us feel about the exploration of colour and form found in Hardy’s paintings? And how do Hardy’s paintings highlight the negative spaces in Lauda’s watercolours?

Galerie Joyce Yahouda, space 516
Jean-François Lauda, Paul Hardy, Jenna Meyers and David Gagnon,
Guest Curated by Jean-Louis René
Paintings
June 28 – August 11, 2012
www.joyceyahoudagallery.com