Gladstone Gallery presents ‘Vivian Suter: Wolf’s Hour,’ an exhibition of mixed media paintings from more than thirty years of the artist’s career.
Vivian Suter was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina; studied in Basel, Switzerland, and currently lives and works in Panajachel, Guatemala. Solo exhibitions of the artist’s work have been held at numerous international institutions, including Brücke Museum, Berlin, Camden Arts Centre, London, Tate Liverpool, and Institute of Contemporary Art, Boson, Massachusetts. This show is Suter’s second show with Gladstone Gallery and her first in Belgium.
Expanding the artist’s investigation of using the painted medium to create surreal, immersive environments, Suter employs the gallery’s classic architecture to transpose elements of her tropical studio onto the urban setting of this Belgian townhouse. The walls, ceiling, stairwell, and floor all find activation through the unique installation of unstretched canvases that simultaneously highlight and conceal the rectilinear components of the exhibition space. While conceived and created as unique, individual works, each painting on view is part and parcel with Suter’s artistic macrocosm, in which compositions find infinitely new relevance depending on their placement over, alongside, across, and underneath one another. This permission for recontextualization similarly democratizes Suter’s work for all viewers, allowing for different permutations and transformations with each new installation of the artist’s paintings.
Since the mid-1980s, Suter’s home and studio have been based in the lush climate of the Guatemalan lowlands. Abstracted components of the artist’s surroundings find their way onto the untreated canvases, both figuratively and literally: painterly references to natural forms such as tree canopies, volcanic peaks, and placid lakes exist in company with gestural markings from rainwater, eroded soil, and animal tracks. Suter’s admission of natural phenomena into her oeuvre not only undercuts the notion of a material hierarchy but also offers an ecologically conscious form of existence, with the biological world acting in tandem with the artist’s hand.
The exhibition runs from March 11 – April 30, 2021, at Gladstone Gallery 12 Rue de Grand Cerf, Brussels from 11 am – 8 pm. For further info please visit https://www.gladstonegallery.com/
Installation View of Vivian Suter: Wolf’s Hour at Gladstone Gallery, Brussels
About Author
