Hannah Perry Saucier’s recent show at the Matthew Rachman Gallery “The Chip” is an interesting one.
She is showing two different series of paintings one series called “Mindscape” is fairly interesting bold colors and kind of hip Mid-Century vibe, like a blue record cover meets Stuart Davis thing, I really enjoyed them. I loved the use of color and general feel of the pieces piece’s. The work is about how we remember the world in sort of abstract snippets of information. The world presented in the paintings is a complex one of abstracted cubist landscapes. There are a few where a more traditionally painted area of landscape takes over part of the image, but these areas seem odd and out of place in the pieces. There are also several paintings from a series called “landscape” these are mainly grey paint worked on top of a surface made from something like “great stuff” foam spray. I found nothing at all interesting from these paintings. The whole thing just seemed contrived, with no point. It was such an interesting contrast to her other series which is so controlled with an almost paint by numbers feel and so well realized. The pieces from “landscape” just do not seem to be thought out or well executed. The “Landscape” pieces where smaller and more recently done than the “mindscape” works maybe as this series becomes more fleshed out it’ll become more well realized.
Prices ranged from 1400 to 12,000 for a very large piece from the “mindscape” series.
Volume 32 no. 1 September/October 2017 p 35