Several generations of artists live together in Andrew Krepps’ group exhibition. ‘Interiors’ acts as both an aesthetic and intimate concept for these four artists where rooms convert exhibition spaces into intimate quarters for cohabitation. Placed together are Pierre Bonnard and Eduard Vuillard, both members of the Nabis group of post-impressionist artists who were influenced by the writing of Stéphane Mallarmé, as well as the American Pop-Surrealist William Copley and the Parisian born instillation artist Marc Camille Chaimowicz. Each artist in the exhibition has dealt in various fashions before with domesticity. Chaimowicz, the youngest, in the past has re-created bedrooms and domestic spaces using instillation sculptural practices. Here, the artist presence is subtle but critical. Chaimowicz presents patterned wallpaper and curtains that serves as a backdrop to the paintings in addition to a print, a series of photographs and a piece of sculpture. Quietly, Chaimowicz adds the color palette and conceptual guise that re-forms the exhibition into a piece of sculpture. William Copley, born in 1919, presents a group of paintings that would look comfortable in an exhibition with the Harry Who in Chicago. Purple, pink and lime green dominate his palette where his bowler hatted figures fornicate and amuse themselves. Bonnard and Vuillard, long associated with their curtailed intimiste pictorial universe, are well served in their inclusion. Bonnard has too long been dismissed as soft-core Modernism, or as Picasso once dismissively stated, ‘a potpourri of indecision.’ Instead, placed against Chaimowicz’s wallpaper, Bonnard updates well in a contemporary gallery. Édouard Vuillard has been best known as Bonnard’s artistic younger brother, painting small quasi-abstract oil paintings on cardboard. After around 1900, however, he moved away from formally adventurous work to mediums in distemper and pastel, focusing on realistic portraiture and society scenes. Presented are two works, one an interior and the other a portrait of a blinded French serviceman 'L'aveugle de Guerre, Portrait de Lucien Grandjean' from 1915. Vuillard, like all French artists, was incapable of grasping the implications of France’s descent into modern warfare. Made with pastel and hewing to the conventions of society portraiture, Portrait de Lucien Grandjean stands as a testament to what cannot be said in public, or in private. ‘Interiors’—quiet and formally restrained—speaks to the stated and to what is best stated elsewhere.
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Pierre Bonnard
The Breakfast Room, 1925 Oil on canvas 25 3/4 x 42 1/2 in (65.4 x 108 cm) (wallpaper) Marc Camille Chaimowicz 2011 Non-woven paper |
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William Copley
Under the Law, 1981 Acrylic on linen 64 x 51 in (162.6 x 129.5 cm) |
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Marc Camille Chaimowicz
Console (long), 1994 Birch veneered plywood, formica 160 x 160 x 30 in (406.4 x 406.4 x 76.2 cm) |
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William Copley
Small Sonata, 1965 Oil on canvas 35 x 51 in (88.9 x 129.5 cm) (wallpaper) Marc Camille Chaimowicz 2009 Non-woven paper |
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Édouard Vuillard
L'aveugle de Guerre, Portrait de Lucien Grandjean, 1915 Pastel on paper 26 1/2 x 30 in (67.3 x 76.2 cm) |
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Marc Camille Chaimowicz
World of Interiors (3 individual works), 2008 Screen print on paper 35 1/6 x 27 1/8 in each (89 x 69 cm) |
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