Alan Charlton - Gérard Traquandi

June 23 — October 15, 2011

The conversation established between the two states of color—red and gray—is established to great effectiveness right from the entrance to the room. Charlton’s regular constructions contrast with the fragility and rapidity of Traquandi’s forty-two paintings in a range of red hues on Japanese paper. We are in the presence of a sequence whose common thread is variation.

Charlton practices a form of painting in which different rectangular elements are highlighted by their spacing along the wall and their spatial environment. The painting, now a construction tool and module, participates in a collection that can either close in on itself or provoke a dynamic.

The significance of such a contradictory dialog is that within the exhibit, it separates two territories while making them complementary for the occasion. It encourages reflection on the diversity and complexity of contemporary painting in fields that seem close, such as recent studies in abstraction or color.
Frédéric Valabrègue