On Tuesday May 26, 2020 at 11.30 a.m. Joseph Gallivan interviews painter Jaq Chartier about her show SunTests, which is on now at the Elizabeth Leach Gallery through June 27. Chartier’s brightly colored prints on aluminum plate show the migration and fading of colored dyes over time. She makes paintings and leaves them in her window, tracking the changing colors. She scans them every day and prints a selection on aluminum plate. Some dyes are fast and some are fugitive, and the painter never knows what will happen when she makes her first marks. Chartier talked with Joseph Gallivan of KBOO by Zoom video conferencing from her Seattle studio.
SunTests has been extended through June 27, 2020 because of the coronavirus lockdown. The Elizabeth Leach gallery is open by appointment.
FROM THE PRESS RELEASE:
May 7 - June 27, 2020
Elizabeth Leach Gallery is pleased to present Seattle-based painter Jaq Chartier's SunTests. This new series of dye sublimation prints on aluminum are time-based "image captures" of the artist's ongoing explorations of material phenomena. Chartier's unique process-based practice shares a visual language with Color Field painting and combines her fascination with materiality, time, and conditions. Inspired by DNA gel electrophoresis (a technique for separation and analysis of macromolecules and their fragments), her work is about discovery and pairs scientific investigations with conceptual themes of impermanence.
The SunTests series records the mutability and transformation of intensely brilliant, jewel-toned colors created from fugitive dyes, inks, and stains that change over time when exposed to sunlight. The experimental processes continue in the paintings in Chartier's studio, while the prints on view in the gallery offer glimpses into suspended moments of their metamorphosis.
Multiple groupings selected by the artist allow viewers to witness the evolution of colors and shapes in visibly distinctive phases of change. Lively structured rows of blurred, animated abstractions in the triptych, SunTest #3 (Day 1, 12, 35) continually delight with unexpected color shifts, each one infused with the poetic vulnerability of their evanescence.
Jaq Chartier is known for her rigorous Testing series, which explores scientific methods through experimentation with paints, pigments, dyes and inks. Chartier's artworks incorporate elements of color field painting, process art and minimalism. Jaq Chartier received her BFA from the University of Massachusetts (Amherst, MA) and her MFA at the University of Washington (Seattle, WA). She has exhibited widely at such venues as the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art (San Jose, CA), Zentrum Paul Klee (Bern, Switzerland), Kunstmuseum Ahlen (Ahlen, Germany), Henry Art Gallery (Seattle, WA), Berkeley Art Museum (Berkeley, CA), Seattle Art Museum (Seattle, WA), and Bellevue Art Museum (Bellevue, WA). Her work is included in many public and private collections, including the Schwartz Art Collection at Harvard Business School (Cambridge, MA), Progressive Art Collection (Cleveland, OH) and the Tacoma Art Museum (Tacoma, WA).
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Joseph Gallivan has been a reporter since 1990. He has covered music for the London Independent, Technology for the New York Post, and arts and culture for the Portland Tribune, where he is currently the Business Reporter. He is the author of two novels, "Oi, Ref!" and "England All Over" which are available on Amazon.com
This show was recorded at over Zoom on May 22, 2020.
- KBOO