PATRICIA TREIB VARIATIONS
SEPTEMBER 9 – OCTOBER 31 2021
F is pleased to present Variations, a solo exhibition by New York-based painter Patricia Treib focusing solely on oil paintings on paper. Variations is on view, by appointment, at 4225 Gibson Street, Houston, TX 77007, from September 9 – October 31, 2021. An opening reception will be held on Sunday, September 12, from 4-6pm.
Patricia Treib bases her paintings on a group of motifs that she works with in a multitude of variation, in a continual re-engagement with the original referent. The motifs stem from her observations of an antique clock, a still life set up of 35mm cameras, a segment of a religious icon, the bloused sleeves from a sewing pattern illustration. Her paintings have rigorously consistent perimeters: size, material, the brush used. The dimensions of the works on paper have stayed the same for almost a decade: 7.5 x 5.5 inches. There are rules: Every large painting has a corresponding small work on paper. The perimeters are set and yet they are in a constant state of flux and refinement, with a firm pressure that expands the project over time.
At any given point, the project is the accrual of its limits. It might do us well to call the compositions on paper scores that she plays or performs in practice. I think of Satie; I think of Glenn Gould playing Bach. Treib’s lyricism evokes sets of interchangeable terms that are applicable across the work or in any painting on its own. Drawing is both observation and line making. The tones of the shapes become the tones in a melody. The variations are played through as re-performance, as a song played again (or as dance?), using green in one variation to replace a red shape in another, or red instead of black. There is the impulse to describe them through a synaesthetic experience, the co-feeling of color and sound, or to talk of their “movement,” but that belies the supreme visuality of her work. Her works offer the pleasure of looking—at the compositions, at the interlocking colors, at the colored shapes in contrast with the visible ground, and at the shapes between that are as considered and present as the marks. These between shapes flicker from one work to the next as ground, to figure, to ground. The paintings feel immediate, as if they were made all at once, and in a way, it’s nearly true: with the large paintings, she works wet into wet, often finishing them in a day, requiring a confidence and competence that comes from her studied hand, from the constant practice of the marks and compositions on paper. The variations are each executed in singular focused sittings; as such they are both composition and rehearsal.
Variations gives a sense of the simultaneity that governs the whole of Treib’s project. She has trained her attention to sustain across a spectrum of repose and response, holding her original observations in a continuous state of renewal. Her project is layered with interweaving temporalities: from the extended endlessness of her return back to the original, to the immediacy of her marks, to the interplay of the marks within any one work on its own. At each stage, any one aspect is an engaged and interrelated part of the greater mechanism, held together in the grip of her attention and by a continuum of change.
Patricia Treib (b. 1979, Saginaw, MI) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Treib has exhibited her paintings widely, nationally and internationally, with solo gallery exhibitions at Bureau and Wallspace (both New York), Overduin & Co, Los Angeles, Kate MacGarry, London, and Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm, Sweden. Her motifs were inspiration for the Valentino Des Ateliers Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2021, debuted this summer in Venice, Italy. She was a 2020 recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and her beautiful self-published eponymous monograph, which includes an essay by Joanna Fiduccia and an interview with Ben Lerner, was released last year. Treib was included in the first F exhibition, Fictions, at Derek Eller Gallery, New York, in 2014.
Clockwise from entrance:
Interval Variation II, 2020
Oil on paper, 7.5 x 5.5 inches (19.05 x 13.97 cm)
Framed: 11.5 x 9.5 inches (29.21 x 24.13 cm)
Flounce Variation III, 2021
Oil on paper, 7.5 x 5.5 inches (19.05 x 13.97 cm)
Framed: 11.5 x 9.5 inches (29.21 x 24.13 cm)
Arm Measures Variation, 2021
Oil on paper, 7.5 x 5.5 inches (19.05 x 13.97 cm)
Framed: 11.5 x 9.5 inches (29.21 x 24.13 cm)
Revolve Variation, 2021
Oil on paper, 7.5 x 5.5 inches (19.05 x 13.97 cm)
Framed: 11.5 x 9.5 inches (29.21 x 24.13 cm)
Flounce Variation, 2021
Oil on paper, 7.5 x 5.5 inches (19.05 x 13.97 cm)
Framed: 11.5 x 9.5 inches (29.21 x 24.13 cm)
Flounce Variation II, 2021
Oil on paper, 7.5 x 5.5 inches (19.05 x 13.97 cm)
Framed: 11.5 x 9.5 inches (29.21 x 24.13 cm)
Undulate Variation, 2021
Oil on paper, 7.5 x 5.5 inches (19.05 x 13.97 cm)
Framed: 11.5 x 9.5 inches (29.21 x 24.13 cm)
Shoulders Variation, 2021
Oil on paper, 7.5 x 5.5 inches (19.05 x 13.97 cm)
Framed: 11.5 x 9.5 inches (29.21 x 24.13 cm)
Wreathe Variation, 2020
Oil on paper, 7.5 x 5.5 inches (19.05 x 13.97 cm)
Framed: 11.5 x 9.5 inches (29.21 x 24.13 cm)
Installation photography of Patricia Treib Variations © Sean Fleming
F
4225 Gibson Street
Houston TX 77007
For more information, please contact Adam Marnie at office@fmagazine.info