Surfin’Bird

Acrylic on canvas, folded, cut, stitched, and stretched over wooden stretchers.

16 × 12 in | 40,6 × 30,5 cm

Availability

This painting is available for purchase online on Artsy and for in-person viewing in New York via Garvey | Simon Gallery.

Details

The background

shows random small blue, red, and yellow dots on raw cream canvas.

Featured in

GALLERY EXHIBITION

Concurrence

Julien Gardair and Melanie Vote

20 March – 4 May 2024

DFN Project, New York

DFN Project, New York

The exhibition offers an intimate exploration of works by artists Julien Gardair and Melanie Vote, who beyond their individual artistic pursuits, share a bond as a married couple.

Left: Julien Gardair, Zaouj, 2023, 16x12in, Acrylic on canvas, folded, cut, stitched, and stretched over wooden stretchers. Center: Melanie Vote, Flamboyan, 2023, 16-x12in, oil paper mounted on wood panel. Right: Julien Gardair, Striped, 2023, 16x12in, Acrylic on canvas, folded, cut, stitched, and stretched over wooden stretchers.

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Close up on artist Julien Gardair hand stitching a painting cutout.

The painting cutout series combines the materiality of Support/Surfaces with the exuberance of Pattern and Decoration while sharing the radical constraints of Minimal Art.

The works are ambiguous and simultaneously political statements, bold paintings, decorative ornamentations, textile, and craft works.

They are tactile and abstract while including sometimes represented subjects.

A double-sided painting is folded, cut, unfolded twice, then stitched to another.

The folds expose what lies behind them. The stitches are a visible and healing way to assemble the parts, inviting the possibility of restoring the painting to its original state.

The series explores the interaction of these surfaces. It creates a trustworthy space where nothing gets discarded or forgotten.

By utilizing every part, I aim to make more with less and reconcile the apparent contradictions between positive and negative shapes, figuration and abstraction, freedom and constraints, one and another, past, present, and future.

The cuts follow a sustainable system that generates zero waste in a continuous piece.

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