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Claude Temin-Vergez
Place of birth ParisCountry of residence United Kingdom
It's surprising, when you think about it, how many women painters lately have been using Abstract Expressionism as a foil for their own work. In New York one can easily think of artists as various as Sue Williams, Suzanne McClelland, and Cecily Brown. Now, from France by way of London (where she was educated and currently works), comes Claude Temin-Vergez, who clearly has taken Jackson Pollock's poured paintings as her reference point, thereby showing a degree of nerve that's either admirable or foolish depending on your point of view. (It says a lot for both artists that whatever else one thinks of TeminVergez's paintings, they don't look dated.) Not that she emulates the reckless and expansive character of Pollock's art. Her reinterpretation is essentially formalist--focusing on the swirling, interlacing arabesques of paint in his classic poured works of 1947 and 1950 and the way those webs of color sir so determinedly atop their canvas support--but inflected, perhaps, by '70s-derived notions of pattern as a specifically feminine approach to form.
She amplifies both the decorative character of the Pollockesque line and its physical palpability. Working on rigid supports (MDF or aluminum panels that have been painted a single opaque color) rather than canvas, she refuses her skeins of acrylic color any degree of absorption into the ground. Her extremely plasticky colored lines are emphatically tactile, and they intertwine, at times piling up, without ever mixing. This is made all the more obvious by the fact that Temin-Vergez works to create a suggestion of fragmentation. She never covers the near-entirety of the ground, as Pollock usually did, knitting together a relatively homogeneous surface; instead she emphasizes the dichotomy of paint and support and the distinction between one line and another by leaving much of the monochrome ground exposed. Likewise she counters Pollock's sense of the painting's internal wholeness, indicated by the way his pours are mostly contained within the limits of the canvas, by always allowing her patterns to g o off the edges of the rectangle.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Artforum International Magazine, Inc.
Education
1998-2001 Royal Academy of Arts post-graduate course, painting.
1995-1998 Central St Martins College of Art, BA Honours Painting.
1994-1995 Chelsea College of Art, Foundation course.
Selected exhibitions:
2007 ‘Expanded Painting’, curated by Paco Baragan, Art Basel Miami, US
2007 ‘Castellon International Painting Prize’ 3rd edition, Castellon.County Council, Spain. Touring to ARCO Madrid
2006 Solo Show, Space Other Gallery, Boston
2005 'Ex-Roma', Group show, Abbey Award retrospective, APT Gallery, London
2005 Spazi Aperti' Romanian Academy, Rome
2005 'Painting London'
Collections:
Stanley Picker Collection; London Institute; Galleria Next Door, Rome; Space Other Gallery, Boston; Debenhams; Abbey National insurance; Pearl Assurance plc; 18 red Lion court; Ofima patrimoine; SFH Cocoa Ltd;
Links London on Loan
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