Maaike Schoorel “Gradient” at Marc Foxx Gallery LA

Sat, May 14 - Sat, Jun 11  2016

Marc Foxx Gallery - San Francisco Consulate Region

Through June 11, Marc Foxx Gallery presents “Gradient,” a solo exhibition by Dutch artist Maaike Schoorel in Los Angeles, CA.

The exhibition’s title, “Gradient,” refers to many aspects of the exhibition; the palettes’ tones and shades, the scale of works from small to large, and the atmosphere of the works on exhibition in addition to referring to a musical scoring. In 2015, Schoorel was awarded the residency at The American Academy in Rome, where she made the paintings on view. As usual in her practice, Schoorel employed photographs of her day-to-day experience to compose the exhibition’s body of work.

Maaike Schoorel is internationally known and admired for her atmospheric paintings which utilize scientific and phenomenological principals of perception. The Amsterdam-based painter has studied the writings of neuroscientists V.S. Ramachandran and Erik Scherder and included their research into building her contemplative painting project. Her paintings incorporate scenes from her intimate life in relationship to the historical precedents of still life, portraiture and landscape.

Schoorel began the “Gradient” project with the intention of specifically building the exhibition from small to large and white to black, day to night. Schoorel’s paintings are time-based, and the viewer’s visual commitment is necessary to complete the incantation. Her precise, layered compositions are carefully built and require time for the eye and brain to acclimate and reveal the compositions, which slowly emerge from the surface.

The artist never describes forms in full, but instead extracts essential visual qualities and lays in vital additions imbued with movement and physicality. Schoorel has said of her work “ …it’s not about the emulation of something” … “the image is just a reference point.”

About Maaike Schoorel

Schoorel is currently included in The Future is Already Here––It’s Just Not Evenly Distributed, 20th Biennale of Sydney, curated by Stephanie Rosenthal, and was recently featured in the exhibition Conversation Piece Part II at Fondazione Memmo in Rome. Selected solo exhibitions include Maaike Schoorel, Gemeente Museum, The Hague (2016), Conservatory at Mendes Wood, São Paulo, curated by Carolyn H. Drake (2013), and Conversation Piece IV, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem (2012-2013). She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions including Silence Out Loud, Museum Kranenburgh, Bergen (2015), TANTRUM, Le Teinturier De Geest, Brussels, curated by Joseph Tang (2015), Salon, Kunstverein, Amsterdam (2015), How soon is now?, Manifesta Foundation, Amsterdam (2014–2015); Variations: Conversations in and Around Abstract Painting, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles (2014–2015); and Landscape: The Virtual, the Actual, the Possible?, Guangdong Times Museum Guangzhou (2014), touring to Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, The Peacock, Grazer Kunstverein, Graz (2014). Schoorel has been invited to the American Academy in Rome (2015), Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences at The Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome (2015) and the International Studio & Curatorial Program, New York (2013). Cura Books has just released Elemento, a book on the paintings made during her recent Rome residencies.

About Marc Foxx

Founded in Santa Monica in 1994, Marc Foxx is now a contemporary art gallery on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.