In Laurence Garnesson's work, we find a personal and delicate style, preoccupied with abstraction - lyrical abstraction. Looking at her work, the name Joan Mitchell comes to mind for its energy and finesse of color - but so does a contemporary like Per Kirkeby, who is perhaps more of a figurative artist preoccupied with structure... In any case, insistence on labels like abstract and figurative is often reductive, even inadequate.
And to describe Laurence Garnesson's work as abstract would be rather inadequate. True, you won't find any immediately identifiable figuration here, but the works are rich in structure. More or less elaborate structures are laid down to form the skeleton of her compositions. These structures are then densified, dressed, linked or concealed, all the while serving as load-bearing elements in these ensembles that come towards you, partially hiding a background.
To think of evoking a landscape seems obvious, especially an emotional one. There are also airy atmospheres that carry with them the ephemerality of an insect's flight, or frail constructions held together like a spider's web. For in this universe we find the light, in the good sense of the word, as well as the impenetrable and earthy. All marked by the dynamism of a posed gesture that carries within it the continuation of the movement.
Although the supporting structures are rather dark, often black, the immediate impression is one of great luminosity. There's the light of white backgrounds left bare, and the light of color. Sometimes it's an icy palette of pale blues and grays, sometimes the dominant color is warmer: sometimes hemp rubs shoulders with lime, lilac or burnt red.
Brief encounters are made, fragile bonds are forged, and underneath a formation has just taken root. Like a pavane that unfurls as it rises towards the light, but whose dancers always return to the ground.
Maria Lund
Press kit