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Tessa Perutz

Jardin du Midi

October 25, 2019 - December 19, 2019

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Works

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Artworks

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    Tessa Perutz
    Isabelle’s Hibiscus, Bourgogne #2 (Esprit du Roi Soleil)

    2019
    Oil on canvas
    100 x 80 cm

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    Tessa Perutz
    A Gathering of Six Trees in Tropicalia (Upstate, NY)

    2019
    Oil and Belgian sand on canvas
    100 x 80 cm

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    Tessa Perutz
    Mur du Jardin à Pontagny, Bourgogne (Stamp Motif)

    2019
    Oil on canvas
    100 x 80 cm

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    Tessa Perutz
    Thé d'Hibiscus (after Oiticica)

    2019
    Hibiscus tea in glass dispenser and lacquered stand
    Dimensions variable

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    Tessa Perutz
    Path Outside Lavendel Fields, Hasselt #1

    2019
    Oil, pencil and Belgian sand on paper, framed
    36 x 29 cm

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    Tessa Perutz
    Path Outside Lavendel Fields, Hasselt #2

    2019
    Oil, pencil and Belgian sand on paper, framed
    36 x 29 cm

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    Tessa Perutz
    Pond at Chateau Gaasbeek #2 (Midsummer)

    2019
    Gouache and pencil on paper, framed
    36 x 29 cm

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    Tessa Perutz
    Pond at Chateau Gaasbeek #1 (Midsummer)

    2019
    Gouache and pencil on paper, framed
    36 x 29 cm

3D Tour

Press Release

MLF l Marie-Laure Fleisch is pleased to announce Tessa Perutz’ first solo exhibition at the gallery, Jardin du Midi. Perutz’ immersive installation features paintings of abstract, spiritual landscapes, which share the space with a large embroidered textile work and a thick carpet of lavender flowers from the Lavanderaie des Hautes Baronnies, coating the entire floor of the gallery. The lavender’s calming scent provides an environs of tranquility and reflection, in which the viewer is presented works that explore the depths of natural worlds, life cycles, and collective memory. The simultaneous individuality and universality of these considerations resonates strongly, revealing the works as landscapes of the soul.

Specific sceneries and substances in the works are chosen as mementos, demarking periods in time. By utilizing these locations and materials, the artist explores nature’s capability to unify viewer and maker, as well as the sharing of memories via the familiarity of the landscape. Perutz produces works that memorialize people and experiences through direct visual sensations. Motifs of bodies of water, forest canopies, botanicals and the sun and moon play freely in her works, opening up spaces to consider personal and universal themes of connection and separation.

By incorporating materials such as sand, lavender and hibiscus Perutz references the healing properties found in nature. Influenced by traditions in Eastern medicine, the artist aligns the artworks as also referencing Western practices such as herbalism, naturopathy and other disciplines. The physicality of the materials works in harmony with the visuals of the landscapes, gracefully balancing colour, rhythm and symmetry. For the first time, Perutz includes these materials in the paintings themselves, mixing in sand sourced from various locations to create texture but also to physically integrate places and ritual into the artworks.

Notions of spirituality are also key; in both personal and more interconnected ideologies. Concerned with the cyclical nature of life and afterlife, the artist repeats specific abstract and representational motifs to simulate the recurring waves of energy found in all life forms. Allusions to natural symmetries or patterning, via reflections in water, sun cycles, or split horizons, reflect an inquiry into the infinite nature of regeneration and rebirth - constant in both the human and natural worlds. In this way, mirroring is used frequently as a philosophical device.

An essential element in Perutz’s practice is colour, often reminiscent of psychedelia. A wide palette is used to delineate familiar forms, which become wondrous and dreamy, evoking feelings of wanderlust. Fields or forests are depicted in vivid hues of tropicalia, freeing them from notions of temporality of geography. Mixing signals for night and day, the works exist a fantastical world which is available to us only through Perutz’ unique vision.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Tessa Perutz
Jardin du Midi
notes by Evelyn Simons

It has been a bit over a year now since Tessa Perutz has changed the decor of her daily life from New York to Brussels. Since, she has ventured out into various regions of Belgium and its neighbouring countries, revisiting longstanding memories as well as discovering new territories. This exhibition, bearing the illustrious title Jardin du Midi is a testimony of this spontaneous exploration: pinpointed with anecdotes, hasty jottings and existential ponderings. Simultaneously, this body of work stands as an invitation: a heartfelt welcoming of wandering bodies and minds into a momentum of sensorial contemplation.

The gallery exudes the unmistakable scent of lavender, spread in abundance over the floor for you to wade into. The calming and soothing effects of this lush carpet instantly evoke a sense of tranquillity, a paradise of serenity.

Perutz is a landscape painter. She follows a hefty tradition by doing so, but liberates herself from the shackles of this legacy with each sketch, each brushstroke, each sign or pictorial gesture. Her works feel extremely fresh and free, as if they are not driven by a canon, nor want to be iconoclastic. They are paintings without be overtly self-aware that they are.

Her landscapes are driven by centrifugal movement. They lure you in with their appealing and buoyant colours, only to disorient you once your gaze is hooked. Trees, bushes, lakes, paths and flowers are – on a closer look – difficult to discern. Perutz paints generously, and with utter precision. Paint is applied in thick but homogenous layers, the compositions seem to have been made up of cutouts. Their whimsical outlines transform volumes into surrounding negative spaces and vice versa, conveying a density in which every element stands on the same plane. This plays out a tension between idyll and confusion, whirling up the perspective to make you feel encapsulated by these opaque universes.

Perutz’ body of work at large is shaped by processes of conceptualization, intuition and execution; phases that don’t occur linearly but that intertwine and inform each other. Visually, this translates into echoes of paintings making appearances in others, in playing with scale and repetition – both in subject and in colours, in mirroring and in excavating the potential of seriality. This unearthing of patterns and motives from the artist’s own repertoire, is inscribed by a fascination for signage and the impermanence of mark making. Collectively, they form an iconology that runs as an undercurrent through a personal biography. At the back of the space: a mystical portal on textile, an entry point. The pace is rhythmic, the timeline cyclical. Spaces are interchanged, memories fade, and events overlap.

Throughout this chronology of moments, the energy never dissolves but continues to flow.
Organic additions such as the sand in the paint as well as the lavender live their own lives – reminiscent of how memories are shaped by our unconsciousness – adding to the process of decay and reincarnation. The universal feeling of loss is soothed by this understanding, and expressed through the juxtaposition of seemingly opposing (but actually endlessly subsequent) natural phenomena such as the cycles of dusk and dawn, the moon and the sun.

Loved-ones left behind are partially healed with new friendships; a scenic walk at Bois de la Cambre merges with memories of upstate New York. This melting pot of crisscross-wired thoughts impregnates the cheerful colours in Jardin du Midi like a phantasmagoric place. The scenes bleed from the canvas, and their human absence expresses the psychedelic sensation of physical decentralisation. Jardin du Midi overlays lived with imagined or remembered realities, be they from the artist or from you. The environment takes you in as a disembodied vessel for new memories.

Artist Biography

Born in Chicago, USA, 1988
Lives and works in Brussels and New York.

Education
2011

BFA in Painting, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago

2009
Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, London, UK

Solo Exhibitions
2019
Jardin du Midi, MLF | MARIE-LAURE FLEISCH, Brussels, Belgium
La Lune Lavande, Stems Gallery, Brussels, Belgium

2018
Sans Souci, 3-D Foundation, Verbier, Switzerland
Letters from Abroad, Serving The People, New York, USA
Karma Solaire, Pablo's Birthday, New York, USA

2017
Wayfinders, duo show with Jessica Hans, Dayspace, Philadelphia, USA
Bay Pictures, Guerrero Gallery, San Francisco, USA

2016
Staring Into The Sea, Pablo's Birthday, New York, USA
Sail Baby, duo show with Jordan Kasey, In Limbo, Brooklyn, USA

2015
Hashtag Nation, Museum of Americabooks, Brooklyn, USA

Selected Group Exhibitions
2019
Benefit For Museum Dhondt Dhaenens, Belgium
Mona Lisa Must Have Had The Highway Blues, Underdonk, Brooklyn, USA
Imagined Realities, Marie Laure Fleisch, Brussels, Belgium
Set For The Sun, Lobe Block, Berlin, Germany
Clear Objects, Like Lalique, curated by Nick Farhi, Ventanas Techo, Mexico City, Mexico
Salon de Peinture, Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium
Looking At The World Through Rose Coloured Glasses, Sofie Van de Velde & Plus-One, Antwerp, Belgium
A meeting with Erna Schilling, Pablo's Birthday, New York, USA
Group Show at Grand Buffet & Pulver's Glass, Babayaga Gallery, Hudson, USA

2018
Underdonk Selects, Underdonk, Brooklyn, USA
Sorry We Weren’t Here to Meet You, We Were Out Exploring, Usagi, Brooklyn, USA
Eddy's Room, curated by Austin Eddy, Usable Space, Milwaukee, WI, USA
Superposition, curated by Johnny Abrahams, Joshua Liner Gallery, New York, USA
Shapeshifters, curated by Brian Willmont, Guerrero Gallery, San Francisco, USA
Group Show, curated by Lucien Smith, Milk Studios, New York, USA

2017
Everything is Going to Be Alright, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Detroit, USA
From out under, curated by Matthew Brown & Lucien Smith, Appointment Only, Los Angeles, USA
Parting and Together, curated by Trudy Benson, Greenpoint Hill, Brooklyn, USA
Somewhere, curated by Gallery 106 Green, Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, USA
The Paperweight Show, Fisher Parrish Gallery, Brooklyn, USA
BAM Gala and Auction, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, USA
Post-Election, September Gallery, Hudson, New-York, USA

2016
The River, Hionas Gallery, New York, USA
Bosco, ROE Projects, Brooklyn, USA
The Congregation, curated by Joshua Abelow, Jack Hanley Gallery, New York, USA
Whisper to me in HTML, with Imogen Lloyd and art404, Prelim Projects, London, UK
Gefa & Taka, Sim House, Reykjavik, Iceland
Presenting, In Limbo, Brooklyn, USA

2015
The Year of the Goose, Either Way, Los Angeles, USA
Change of Address, 139 Emerson Place, Brooklyn, USA
Naked Runaway, curated by Xi Garden, Middle Collegiate Church, New York, USA
Strangers Forming a Group Waiting to Kiss, Motel, Brooklyn, USA
99 Cent Plus Art Shop II, 99 Cent Plus, Brooklyn, USA

2011
An Exchange with Sol Lewitt, Mass MoCA, North Adams, USA
7 x 11, Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Grand Rapids, USA
Postcards from the Edge, CRG Gallery, New York, USA
Three Men and a Baby, with Coleen Self, Impala Studios, Chicago, USA

2010
Spill, Betty Rymer Gallery, Chicago, USA
100 European Starlings, DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, USA
Women's Bodies as Public Spaces, North Park University, Chicago, USA
Slade School at Swiss Cottage, Swiss Cottage, London, UK

Residencies & Awards
2019

The Macedonia Institute, Chatham, New York

2018
3D Foundation, Verbier Sculpture Park, Verbier, Switzerland
Sim, Berlin, Germany

2017
Herhusid, Siglufjordur, Iceland
Minnesota Street Project, San Francisco, USA

2016
Sim, Reykjavik, Iceland

2011
School of the Art Institute of Chicago Merit Scholarship, USA

Curatorial
Founder of Massif Central, artist scarf editions, with exhibitions at:
Gagosian Gallery, New York;
Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn;
NADA Art Fair 2016 and 2017, New York;
Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Detroit;
Sincerely, Tommy, Brooklyn;
Sculpture Center, Queens;
Le Huit, Paris;
Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago;
Nationale, Portland; Spreadhouse, New York, USA

2018
Set Adrift on Memory Bliss, Pablo's Birthday, New York, USA

2015
Yin Yang, 99 Cent Plus, Brooklyn, USA

2010
Help Art Heal Haiti, benefit for Haitian Earthquake Relief, Evanston, USA

2009
Cadaver Corpse, Space 1026, Philadelphia, PA and Golden Age, Chicago, USA

Publications
Artist Feature, Maake Magazine, curated by Holly Coulis, 2018
Plein Air Drawings, Issue One, artmagazine.us, 2016
New York Studios, Issue 68, Packet Biweekly, 2015
the onesheet, foldout interview and poster, 2015
Exhumed Book One, drawings feature, 2011

Bibliography
M.V., "Quatuor Qui S'Accorde" Le Vif Weekend, 2019
"The Bright Side of Brussels" Ace & Tate Journal, 2019
Scott Indrisek, “6 Keys to a Good Artist-Gallerist Relationship,” Artsy, 2019
Laura Pitcher, "How to Collect Emerging Artists with Lolita Cros," i-D Magazine, 2018
"18 standout looks from Expo Chicago," Chicago Tribune, 2018
Alex Garner, "Tessa Perutz," Artforum, 2018
Sasha Bogojev, "Tessa Perutz: Karma Solaire at Pablo's Birthday," Juxtapoz Magazine, 2018
"Cody Hudson and Tessa Perutz Make Beautiful Abstractions," Juxtapoz Magazine, 2017
"Tessa Perutz," Milk Magazine, 2017
Yacine Fall, "30 Under 30," Art Zealous, 2016
Scott Indrisek, "Complex Simplicities: Tessa Perutz," Modern Painters, 2016
Scott Indrisek, "Discoveries (and Steals) at NADA New York 2016," Blouin ArtInfo, 2016
"Prelim Projects 01: Whisper to me in HTML," thisistomorrow, 2016
Grace Linden, "Whisper to me in HTML at Prelim Projects," Temporary Art Review, 2016
David Wilfert, "The Art of The Scarf," World's Best Ever, 2015
"Steal Her Style," TimeOut Chicago, December 2010
Bill Smith, "Art Auction for Haiti" Evanston Now, 2010
"Cadaver Corpse at Space 1026," Art in the Age, 2009
"Pieces by Parcel," Chicago Weekly, 2009
"First Friday Focus Feature," Philadelphia City Paper, 2009


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