January 15 2009 - Feburary 21, 2009
In the early eighties, James Nares reinvented the brush, the surface, and paint. He also reduced his artistic practice solely to exploration of these three elements' expressive potential. For more than twenty years since, Nares has actively investigated the nature of the brushstroke--its size, proportion, materiality, shape, and movement--with invention of his own brushes and stroke-making methods. "Brushes are like characters in a way." Nares says. "Each one does a different dance."
If Nares' brushstrokes can dance, they do so with seductive luminescence under the lights of Paul Kasmin Gallery. Each work therein serves solely to animate and glorify the mark as it squirms and writhes, lurching itself across painted surface with vitality and stamina. Untitled (2007), a royal blue gesture in oil on paper, immediately brings to mind Yves Klein's Anthropométries, wherein the enigmatic Nouveau Réaliste experimented in mark-making with his own "living brushes"--nude women drenched in fresh blue paint. While the proportions and gestural nuances of Nares' paintings draw strong anthropomorphic connections, the prominent anatomy of the painted stroke ultimately calls for a purely formal analysis.
Each of Nares' strokes is a living entity that has made it past the hit-or-miss selection of his critical eye. On some occasions, Nares strokes out hundreds of times--a horizontal tango over a single canvas--while a vigilant, squeegee-wielding assistant waits in the wings, successively wiping the surface clean of each repudiated attempt. Nares says about ninety percent of his brushstrokes are unsuccessful. Those that are allowed to dry and consequentially to be hung upright, serve as formidably candid emblems of abstract activism and the staying power of art as art.
1. Untitled, 2007. Oil on paper.
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