ASTRID PRESTON
east west spring fall
SOLO EXHIBITION
east west fall spring
October 16 - November 27, 2010
Craig Krull Gallery
2525 Michigan Avenue, B3, Santa Monica, CA, 90404
Woven Memories, 2010, oil on linen, 42 x 126 inches
Astrid Preston's paintings and drawings are grounded in the premise that a landscape is an abstract human construct based on our ability to mentally remove ourselves from the natural world. Because of this conceptual separation, we are still trying to resolve our complicated and ever-changing relationship to nature. Preston addresses both the wild, which has been in our evolutionary blood for thousands of years, and the cultivated, which represents our desire for order and control. While her paintings of topiaries, hedges, mazes and vast deserts dotted with perfectly rounded sagebrush could be described as allegorical, metaphysical and even surreal, her current work, east west spring fall explores the intricate complexities of tangled vines and leaves. The plant forms range from the eugenia in her backyard to the cherry blossoms of Japan. Some are dense foliage, while others are stark and barren. In these works, Preston combines western painting sensibilities with eastern concepts such as wabi-sabi-- the Japanese aesthetic based on transience, imperfection, simplicity and the reflection of natural processes. Several paintings in the exhibition are on raw Belgian linen and include images of leaves that trail off into unfinished passages. In another series of square paintings, the artist has superimposed bare branches over floating color fields reminiscent of Rothko.
- Craig Krull
Selected Artworks
Three Cherry Blossom, 2010, oil on linen, 45 x 36 inches
"East west spring fall" showcases a significant leap forward in Astrid Preston's landscape close-up oeuvre. No press release is necessary to prompt recognition of the influence of Japanese art as well as Japanese flora itself. In addition to a few of her particularly recognizable sun-drenched, close-up paintings of plant leaves, in several works here she takes her realism very nearly to abstraction. Smaller paintings of branches from 2008 and '09 feature dense webs of lines that almost depart from figure-ground, were it not for the evidence of their high-concentrated light source.
"Orange Haiku" is the most intriguing of a series of square paintings with painted squares within, leaving a roughly 3-inch border of un-primed linen canvas exposed around the edges, in this case with just a handful of thin branches merging into a large swath of the orange - the Zen of line and color. "Wind from the East" has Preston's now-trademark sun-spattered leaves stretching out across an unprimed linen background, with a few white, skeleton-painted leaves dancing around the edges. "Three Cherry Blossom Trees" is even more spare, the super-thin skeins of the foreground tree in all-white, floating in and out of the branches of its adjacent neighbors. Preston's willingness to go this spare, leaving a lot of real-estate unpainted, is an admirable stretch for her, demonstrating a willingness to not only integrate Eastern aesthetic premises, but also to reach beyond her own comfort zone.
Michael Shaw (published courtesy of ArtSceneCal ©2010)