Julia Rommel — Mother Superior — Gaudel de Stampa Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: September 12 → October 31, 2013

More than anything else, these paintings are about a new relationship to color. I want to make color serve each painting, and so a battle starts, it goes back-and-forth: a surface demands a color, the color demands I change the surface’s shape, which then demands a different color, and so on… and to keep it going, I have to root through my art books, and Color-aid, and friends’ advice — I need their help — it is not instinctive. But I’ll change the painting many times, and the final acceptance is instinctive. And what is that? I don’t know, but it is not about the colors being harmonious or good — my tools at hand are never the answer. I keep going to the point when, I think, the painting has a character despite its colors, or despite its entire self. I am suspicious that it is about this very color battle, it being so mysterious and difficult for me, diverting my attention from the other qualities of the painting, thus allowing them to take form without my constant judgment. That my attention is pushed around and manipulated and hidden from myself as much as any other material — I am taken away from myself, and that is good. And then, the surface displays the history of an action, and whether the marks happened by accident or chance or absent-minded aggression, color once again has to serve them, make them belong, I enter into the mindspace of the battle and the cycle continues.