Elliott Puckette

This is the first European show for this young artist from New York. Over the last six years she has shown extensively in the USA and was recently invited to make an insert for Parkett.

Working with a razor blade on wood panels painted with dark grey ink and pigment, Puckette covers the surface with an elaborate thicket of loops and spirals. The white line is not applied but revealed; the black ink is etched away with the razor blade to expose the white gesso below. The ink wash background is of a varied density; the black field may be traversed by vertical or horizontal striations. Her calligraphic markings seem to be floating in a shallow atmospheric space.

Puckette’s painting bear an obvious relationship to calligraphy and have elements of a woodblock print; her paintings give centre stage to the decorative flourishes with which a talented penman might surround a text. They centre upon an exploration of the cursive, at the junction between writing and drawing, amplifying images and gestures embedded in script. The decorative meets the abstract in Puckette’s work. She is developing a new pictorial language that defends the integrity of beauty and attempts to expand the ways in which it is understood.

Puckette will also present a bank of 40 silhouette drawings. The silhouettes are all of people she knows or have visited her studio. Puckette became interested in the silhouette as an immediate impression of nature – it has an originality that even the most dexterous drawing could not meet. Like her paintings, the silhouettes rely on negative space and the focus lies entirely on the variations in the profiles of the individuals.