David Salle, Tree of Life, This Time with Feeling (Installation View), via Thaddaeus Ropac
Presenting a body of new works at the Thaddaeus Ropac exhibition space in Paris, artist David Salle returns for the culmination of his celebrated Tree of Life series, a body of works that used human dramas and a comical undertone to create a space fro the meditation and reflection on contemporary art and its relation to history.
David Salle, Tree of Life, This Time with Feeling (Installation View), via Thaddaeus Ropac
The works in the series draw in particular from the cartoons of Peter Arno, yet here, are turned towards more nuanced, peculiar arrangements. Salle re-stages Arno’s characters in his paintings, removing any captions or dialogue to allow for ambiguity and misunderstandings to arise from the looks and gestures they exchange. Men, sometimes hatted in the style of the day, and society ladies in form-enhancing dresses seem to embody the dynamic between men and women that has underlaid Western society since the myth of creation. They are mirrored in the fragmented doll-like body parts found in some of the lower sections, playing with stereotypical representations of gender. In related, art-historical terms, the scenes seem to parody the myth of creativity as stemming from an encounter between a male artist and his female muse. Here, however, in contrast with earlier works, Salle leaves the works mostly bear, turning the motifs previously used into a subject in their own right. The tree is left to speak for itself, his cartoon appropriations offered additional space to express themselves. It’s as if each character is afforded its final bow at the curtain.
David Salle, Tree of Life, This Time with Feeling (Installation View), via Thaddaeus Ropac
Across each canvas, vibrantly painted trees spring forth, negotiating a world that seems stark in its cold lines and shading, allowing the artist space to explore the mark and its making. Paint is poured, sloshed, dabbed and stroked across, never detracting from the scenes of Arno’s work, but instead opening up new worlds and dialogues.
David Salle, Tree of Life, This Time with Feeling (Installation View), via Thaddaeus Ropac
Salle’s fractured compositions eschew any linear interpretation. The everyman and woman, represented in the Tree of Life series as types, invite viewers to project their own experience onto the scene and form their own understanding of the characters’ dramatic interactions. In the same way, the multiplicity of visual references across the various components of the painting generates what the artist calls the ‘malleability of meaning’ that is at the heart of his oeuvre. The paintings are engaging without being descriptive. ‘They’re like music, in a way,’ states Salle, ‘being able to identify the notes doesn’t say much about what it feels like to listen to the music.’
The show closes March 4th.
– D. Creahan
Read more:
David Salle: Tree of Life, This Time with Feeling [Exhibition Site]
