The pure pleasure of a group artistic exhibition is in the copiousness of the originality, giving an arts writer the pleasure to reflect upon a variety of expressions of representations of true beauty and therefore involving greater technical elaboration on the subjective selection of works to write about. For the arts writer moves towards perfecting the arts through the elaboration of originality – and that is in the projection of ideas which are self-reliantly beautiful in their form, thereby demonstrating a truly free spirit that is the artist.

Artistic intent, therefore, has a supreme quality when it is that immeasurably profound. Transcendental in its complexity of understanding the sensation experienced aiming to be immutable in the immortality of the living soul that perceives the object. A more than corporeal and therefore spiritual integration, of where bodies contact – in the visual space of the fine arts – through the limited focality of the mind’s eye.

It is in this physical sensation which is desired to be perfect where the understanding of its truth is measured by its outstanding significance in relation to the indestructibility of Nature; or its timelessness in conscious body-contact with the fine-artisanal making.

New Alchemy, 2023. Melanie Authier.
Acrylic on canvas.
48 x 36 in.
121.92 x 91.44 cm.
Courtesy of the artist and Olga Korper Gallery via Praz-Delavallade. Copyright Melanie Authier.

Thus, we have the danger of supercilious play with abstract oils successfully extended by the originality in light experienced in the playfulness of the oils and brushstrokes with Venture Myth and New Alchemy by Melanie Authier. It is daring to be aim for beyond redundant; when there have been innumerable attempts at these expressive tasks of pain, what qualifies this as exceptional?

And it is in the more than chaos, but a delicate flux that captures a Natural idea of a churn which is not chunky. A motion which is not non-sensical in a haphazard course. It is in that approach of a more than random yet not yet ordered patterning effect, fractal-esque, which moves the mind towards a beautiful sensation. And it is here to provide such an original sensation of the prima facie redundancies of paint where the successful score stricken chimes a glory that is to be celebrated.

Les bruits se sont tus 4, 2023. Marie-Claire Blais.
Pigmented calcium carbonate, acrylic medium and plaster on burlap.
63 x 50 in.
160.02 x 127 cm.
Courtesy of the artist and Blouin Division via Praz-Delavallade. Copyright Marie-Claire Blais.

Further works that need to be celebrated are those which dare with media. And the beautiful idea of Les bruits se sons tus 4 by Melanie-Claire Blais revels in a media form that is delicate as the expression is subtle. Even the gentle contour not apparent until physically revealed by the highly engaged, the truly inquisitive into the spirit that conquers this boundary of proud, undaunting scale, is worthy of approbation. For the end result is that necessary extension of human imagination into positive design elements, as well as the technical difficulties in the pigmented calcium carbonate with the likely spontaneous playfulness of the process molding its gracious shape into our mortal bodies contact with the beautiful that humans are capable of extending.

As a blessing. To give, not in vain, is a blessing. To know one’s gifts are not vain, are not cursed, are not bouts of endless torment, but are the burgeoning of spiritual liberation – in knowing, as an artist, I aim for The Good. For I aim to be benevolent.

And I suffer this-world to make it more peaceful.

Beauty is that absent of hostility. Delicacy is that precious to concretely, carboxylically, impress.

Elsewhere, Don’t sell yourself away by Preston Pavlis provides that profoundly impactful statement of going all the way. In the factual unrobing of one’s vain appearance, toward that trial and tempest of mastering one’s fate through clinging to a true form – irrespective of outwardly, awkwardly, appearance. It is in that test of truth – in being this honestly unwavering with the determinacy of one’s will power for goodness on Earth, rather than for contentful and complacent leisure, that reveals the concealed psyche of the artisan. Is he seeking grandeur for vainglory, and thereby aggrandizing hostile positioning in our sensible spaces, or is he moving his invisibility towards the barest of depths to uncover, like a Jonah in the Whale, a beautiful visual song of sweet sorrow?

Don’t sell yourself away, 2023. Preston Pavlis.
Oil on linen, quilted onto fabric backing, safety pins.
54 x 32 in.
127 x 81.3 cm.
Courtesy of the artist and Bradley Ertaskiran via Praz-Delavallade. Copyright Preston Pavlis.

The waters compassed me about, even to the soul; the deep was round about me; the weeds were wrapped about my head.

I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars closed upon me for ever; yet hast Thou brought up my life from the pit, O LORD my God.

Book of Jonah 2:6-7, The Stone Edition of the Chumash

The pain in living in the truth of one’s honest motivations – the struggle to form Nature more beautiful – has that grizzled impressionability with the additional piercing pleasure to be a quilted fabric unraveled. That to know true beauty needs pain to appreciate its rewards, moves the soul towards the consideration of precious contrapposto wasteful.

Last but certainly not least, Nicolas Baier‘s Player One (2020) has that necessary futuristic surrealism that can only be made with the supertechnological advancements in the last two decades of the human races one thousand decades of conscious waking experience actively recorded – even longer. We see a superfuturistic arboreal trajectory – that indisputable broadening of the Western horizon of perspective – now accorded to us by the extension of semiconductor technologies in a vapor-sight, almost calling for an interpretation of ­obsessive-green – a monomaniacal laser vision. Towards what end?

Player One, 2020. Nicolas Baier.
LED Light Box.
42 x 69 in.
106.68 x 175.26 cm.
Edition of 3
Courtesy of Nicolas Baier and Blouin Division via Praz Delavallade. Copyright Nicolas Baier.

Attain complete emptiness,

Hold fast to stillness.

The ten thousand things stir about; I only watch for their going back.

Things grow and grow,

But each goes back to its root.

Going back to the root is stillness.

This means returning to what is.

Returning to what is

Means going back to the ordinary.

Understanding the ordinary;

Enlightenment.

Not understanding the ordinary:

Blindness creates evil.

Tao Te Ching Verse 16

It is in that covert signal towards returning to Natural simplicity that is the verdant-vision fixated with such a metamorphosis of color with the visual, though not necessarily thematic, effect of the green laser-focused light. It is in that beauty of wilderness that is refined in its transcendental perspective that makes this fine art in its continuation of high-culture ergo immortal tradition in the task of answering: What is True Beauty?

For more information, please contact the gallery:

PRAZ-DELAVALLADE LOS ANGELES
6150 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles CA 90048
Tue–Sat, 11am–5pm
+1 (323) 917 5044
losangeles@praz-delavallade.com