FIONA RAE
2012-05-07In 2004, when Rae visited Tokyo and reconnected with visual aspects of her peripatetic childhood in Asia, her lexicon further broadened to include small figures or cartoons whose status is left intriguingly ambiguous. Like Caspar David Friedrich’s human presences in an overwhelming landscape, they serve to point up the metaphysical and artificial dimensions of abstract painting, whilst also providing an empathetic point of identification for the viewer that invokes a more personal reading.
In using elements that might be considered girlish or otherwise unserious, Fiona Rae looks to re-examine their meaning and expressive possibilities from what could be seen as a feminist perspective. In more recent paintings, these ludicrous yet gnomic images might be thrust into passages of expressive brushwork, layered and dense, or caught in black calligraphic drawing inspired by Dürer’s Apocalypse woodcuts, to produce dramatic and emotive compositions. Her recent titles often purport to be exclamations or statements, but like her paintings, they elude definitive explanation and can appear simultaneously dark and charming, anxious and insouciant.
Opposite – Angel, 2000
Exhibition runs through to August 26th, 2012
Leeds Art Gallery
The Headrow
Leeds
LS1 3AA
