NICOLE KATSURAS | PAINTER'S PARADISE
Nicole Katsuras | Painter's Paradise
November 9 - 23, 2019
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 9, 2019, 2-4 PM
Bau-Xi Vancouver is pleased to present Painter's Paradise, Toronto-based artist Nicole Katsuras' first exhibition in Vancouver in over 5 years.
Nicole Katsuras’ approach embraces various past traditions in art history while attempting to create a new formal vocabulary for her creative endeavors. Informed by the nuances of the oil medium and a plethora of visual stimulus, Katsuras’ extruded paint technique operates in tandem with her open-ended source material to compose evocative images that collapse simplistic distinctions of genre to transcend the inherent limits of pictures.
An interest in aesthetic semantics and systems of meaning propels Katsuras' experimentation in mark-making to create an expanding visual language of extrusions, brushstrokes and other varied applications. Developed around the notion of an ‘ideal’ or ‘Utopian’ space where the physical and intangible transcend picture-making, Katsuras' points of departure are manifold.
Tracing the pedagogical connections of Joan Mitchell and Pia Fries while aligning herself with their distinct stylistic lineage, Katsuras also draws from diverse influences spanning the likes of Monet for his depiction of light, Van Gogh and Bonnard for their technique with colour, and Hofmann's use of spatial illusion. Katsuras also credits her exposure to the unrestrained approaches of Mary Heilmann and Thomas Nozokowski, which allowed the artist license to paint without reservations.
With her high impasto, jewel-like palettes and organic forms, the artist's practice speaks to a persistent underpinning force, one which expands through exuberant gestures outward from the two-dimensional space of her canvasses. Katsuras' gradient, multi-tone surfaces and interacting forms shift focus on the picture plane. Functioning at once as abstract interpretations of the psyche and observational remarks on the harmony of proportion, value and texture, Katsuras' compositions render palpitating spatial tensions with dynamic movements, voluptuous lines and frenetic streaks of colour which layer to build toward a sublime release.