Pat Steir: Paintings II. Gagosian

Once I start pouring paint you can't go back - you can't take it off. It is there. I can start again, but I cannot change what I have done. Like in life.

(Pat Steir)

Pat Steir: Paintings II. Gagosian (https://gagosian.com/exhibitions/2022/pat-steir-paintings-part-ii/)

American painter, born in 1940, Pat Steir began her artistic career close to the conceptual and minimalist world, however, she became internationally famous thanks to her Waterfall. Abstract, dripped, splashed and poured paintings dating back to the 1980s. Steir has been featured in a number of exhibitions and retrospectives around the world, from the Tate Gallery in London to the most important American galleries, and is now on display at Gagosian's Rome venue until 31 August 2022.

Gagosian for the first time celebrates one of the few women in the limelight of the New York art scene. Her style begins with iconic images and texts that provoke questions about the nature of representation, and then, under the influence of the East, arrives at a freer, more performative approach. Exploiting the forces of nature, from gravity to chance, the artist pours, sprays and brushes diluted paint onto canvas, often on a monumental scale. Inspired by the compositional randomness of John Cage's music, the ink of Chinese calligraphy and the thought of Zen Buddhism, a painting of ancient origins monochromatic and with virtuoso brushstrokes. Steir thus developed an intuitive and conscious response to the innovations of post-war Abstractionism. Bold colours deepen his pictorial research into the role of intention and improvisation of process and perception in the pictorial structure by coagulating impressions of light and natural sensations.

The works on display investigate the binary dynamics of colour. Artistic research based on chance, colour and gesture interacting with the temporal dimension. Layers and overlapping layers on which ripples of colour emerge. Seasons, light, natural elements, falling water and night alternate within the rooms of the Gagosian through Pat Steir's pictorial gesture.

Photos made by Carlotta Ceccarini