JAQ CHARTIER Color Tests
Schroeder Romero is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new work by Jaq Chartier. This is her third solo exhibition at the gallery.
Jaq Chartier’s paintings are more like scientific tests than they are traditional paintings. Her luminous panels archive the interaction between different stains, dyes, household sealants and varnishes as they merge, bleed and mutate. As these materials interact, the composition of the painting emerges. Her work clearly involves meticulous analysis however chance is an important component to her process. The instability of the materials allows unexpected effects that Chartier considers essential to her conceptual framework.
Through experimentation, observation, and notation, Chartier
charts the migration of water-soluble inks, dyes, and chemical
stains through the painstaking application of layers of paint and
acrylic resin….Regarding these trials, Chartier speaks less of
creating a painting than she does of finding a painting.
– Robin Held Chief Curator, Frye Art Museum, Seattle
While a piece is in progress some of the stains melt and bleed up into the over-layers in evocative ways, while other stains are buried or ghosted. They develop like organisms in a petri dish, with individual forms creeping and swelling, or sometimes completely disappearing. Chartier includes informal pencilled notes on the front, sides and back of the paintings to keep track of the materials and processes used, considering each piece to be part of a growing archive of results.
Chartier’s work is in several public collections including Microsoft, The Progressive Art Collection, the Tacoma Art Museum and USAA. Recent exhibitions include Genesis – The Art of Creation, Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Switzerland (January 2008); Diagnose (Art): Contemporary Art Reflecting Medicine, Kunstmuseum Ahlen, Germany; and Human Nature II: Future Worlds, Indiana University, Bloomington. Jaq Chartier lives and works in Seattle.