05.05.–10.07.2011
Exhibition at Café Cult #49

Gabriele Chiari

As part of the exhibition series CaféCult #49, Gabriele Chiari was showing a piece that she made expressly for the CaféCult.

An experimental approach with paint and paper forms the foundation of Gabriele Chiari’s artwork. Her work involves folding or crumpling paper and letting paint flow over it, smoothing it out afterwards. Puddles might also form, the edges of which create the structure of the painting. Or she shapes wet paper over corrugated metal, brushes it with paint, lets it dry briefly, and finally sprinkles water on it outdoors. This results in seemingly unintentional shapes and images.

But for Gabriele Chiari this painting style is a game that shifts between happenstance and calculation. At first the images and shapes develop only in the artist’s mind. In different steps and selection processes she tries to get closer to these imagined structures through her painting. Gabriele Chiari feels herself to be a source of inspiration for her pieces, which then become independent in a sense.

The starting point for the picture in CaféCult was the room itself, its light, and the play between indoor and outdoor space. If the Salzach flowing by was the initial inspiration and thus the idea of flowing, the process of painting quickly took center stage.

For the Cult picture it was important to me to respond to the space, its light, the play between the interior and exterior. In the beginning I was inspired by the Salzach flowing by, but as I began working on it I quickly moved away from the idea of flowing. However, the color of the Salzach, turquoise, remained, even if it appears slightly more artificial and colder than that which can sometimes be seen from the café.

In the search for the right distance/relationship, the process of painting became more and more important. It was concentrated on a single gesture here, dunking a ten-meter role of paper into a tub of paint. This was followed by a long wait and, eventually, the unrolling, which revealed the drawing. I then selected a sequence in proportion to the wall in Café Cult.
(Gabriele Chiari)

Gabriele Chiari, born in 1978 in Hallein, lives and works in Paris. Gabriele Chiari studied painting at École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Recently she showed her work in the solo exhibitions En regard(s), Domaine de Kerguéhennec, Bignan as well as
Le léger, le grave, École des Beaux-Arts, Beaune, in 2011 and Untergrund, Galerie d’art, Créteil, in 2010.