Monique van Genderen

Galleri Brandstrup proudly presents a new series of art works by the L.A.-based artist Monique van Genderen. Her first solo exhibition at the gallery is entitled Abstrakt Maler: The Gentle Art of Making Enemies.

Van Genderen graduated from California Institute of the Arts in the early 1990s, and although she may be associated with other Los Angeles painters of that decade, her work engages a complex vocabulary of historical and contemporary references. In her work, Van Genderen explores elements of narrative, illusion and figuration within the framework of abstraction. One can say that the artist allows the surface and material to narrate the picture plane, rather than a subject. Her works explore the intervention of hardedge abstractions made from traditional painter’s mediums and various industrial materials. In one work, there is silhouette of a flower the way Matisse would paint it, but in the next, she uses elements of the typical style of Mark Rothko.

Her abstract and non-figurative paintings shows a spatial complexity achieved only through the play of light and color. The surfaces in her paintings are alternately transparent and reflective, and a closer look reveals occasional matte areas, which define the physical surface on which she works. The various levels of transparency and reflection are achieved through different types of paint: oil, enamel and alkyd. Pieces or additional planes proclaim a structure within the canvas. The painter is aware of the edge, usually stopping short of it, occasionally going off it. Her color choices range from organic to synthetic – from the pastoral colors of the garden to the neon lights of the nightclub.