BE THEREGail Gregg: Recent PaintingsPresented by Luise Ross Gallery October 25, 2007- December 21, 2007Reception: October 25, 5:30 pm - 7:30 pmGail GreggIn her new paintings at Luise Ross Gallery, the abstract artist Gail Gregg has turned for inspiration from the aerial landscape views of recent years to more earthbound and quotidian objects: the virtually unnoticed remnants of our consumer culture. Cardboard packing forms, wine box dividers, plastic packaging of all sorts -- all the stuff that comes with the stuff we buy -- is grist for Gregg’s new paintings. Using the wax-and-pigment medium of encaustic, she transforms these throw-away objects into formal paintings that honor the eccentric forms and patterns of the humble materials. Infused with color—and Gregg is a master colorist -- that is enhanced by the medium’s luminosity, the paintings take on sensuous richness. Arrangements of loom cards from a 19th century factory invoke the golden mean and honeycombs. Such package fittings as One Way, which protected a radio in transit, take on solid, iconic form – familiar, yet unfamiliar. Similarly, coffee trays are given a makeover in Location 819, painted and dressed up in bits of tulle and satin. On one level, with their saturated color and hand-burnished surfaces, these new paintings speak to the possibility of transformation – and to Gregg’s belief that beauty can be found in the unlikeliest of places. On quite another, her wit and gentle irony provoke questions about our culture of consumerism and proclivity to waste. Finally, her quietly formal pictures are animated by references to (and questions about) negative space, geometric pattern and symmetry.
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