{"id":799,"date":"2021-06-04T08:06:02","date_gmt":"2021-06-04T00:06:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/?p=799"},"modified":"2021-06-03T10:12:47","modified_gmt":"2021-06-03T02:12:47","slug":"how-julie-mehretu-creates-her-deeply-layered-abstractions-referencing-todays-most-pressing-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/artist\/how-julie-mehretu-creates-her-deeply-layered-abstractions-referencing-todays-most-pressing-issues\/","title":{"rendered":"How Julie Mehretu Creates Her Deeply Layered Abstractions Referencing Today\u2019s Most Pressing Issues"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>In\u00a0<a id=\"auto-tag_julie-mehretu\" href=\"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/\" data-tag=\"julie-mehretu\">Julie Mehretu<\/a>\u2019s spacious\u00a0<\/b><\/span><span class=\"s1\">studio in New York\u2019s Chelsea neighborhood, her sprawling, intricate abstract paintings hold center stage, along with the tools one would expect in the making of them: brushes, paints in a daunting array of colors, and a cherry picker that keeps her elevated at a painting\u2019s height as she works to the music of Nina Simone, John Coltrane, Sun Ra, and Julius Eastman. A less visible tool that sits largely in the background, however, has made all the difference in her recent work: the computer.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s1\">Mehretu\u2019s recent paintings have reached epic proportions, some stretching 25 feet wide, and the interaction between the shapes within is incredibly complex. When a painting \u201cfeels like it gets to this really heightened sense of this other form of experience,\u201d Mehretu said in a recent video call, she takes a step back and begins photographing it, analyzing it first on her phone and then on her computer screen, where she plays around with pushing it forward, then sketches out those alterations by hand, and finally airbrushes, spray-paints, and sometimes screen-prints them directly on the canvas.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cThe paintings are constantly being processed through the computer,\u201d she said. \u201cIn the end, these are just other ways to generate the painting and \u2026 think around the visual-ness of it. Because when paintings are of a certain scale, you can only get so far back in whatever space you\u2019re in. The computer or photograph is a way to see differently and \u2026 to understand what you\u2019re doing differently.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s1\">Mehretu generally begins a painting by projecting her source images on the canvas, then traces on it a kind of understructure over which she will ultimately layer gestural abstraction. For the newest pieces in her mid-career retrospective that opened at the\u00a0<a id=\"auto-tag_los-angeles-county-museum-of-art\" href=\"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/\" data-tag=\"los-angeles-county-museum-of-art\">Los Angeles County Museum of Art<\/a>\u00a0in 2019 (and is currently on view at the\u00a0<a id=\"auto-tag_whitney-museum\" href=\"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/\" data-tag=\"whitney-museum\">Whitney Museum<\/a>\u00a0in New York), Mehretu used news photographs that she blurred in Photoshop, sometimes merging as many as four photographs in an attempt, she said, to \u201ccreate this other image from that blurred image.\u201d Oftentimes, the coloration or the lighting within the source images will impact the overall color scheme of her paintings, as with the 2016 painting\u00a0<i>Conjured Parts (eye)<\/i>,\u00a0<i>Ferguson<\/i>\u00a0in which the blacks and deep grays of police in riot gear in the aftermath of the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, give way to fuchsias and pinks, blues and greens, a nod to tear gas being refracted by stoplights and streetlights.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"post-content-image \/\/ \">\n<figure class=\"o-figure   aligncenter size-full wp-image-1234594433 lrv-u-max-width-100p\">\n<div class=\"c-lazy-image \">\n<div class=\"lrv-a-crop-16x9\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-lazy-image__img lrv-u-background-color-grey-lightest lrv-u-width-100p lrv-u-display-block lrv-u-height-auto\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/E20200051_Conjured_new_photo_Cathy_Carver.jpg\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 87.5rem) 1000px, (min-width: 78.75rem) 681px, (min-width: 48rem) 450px, (max-width: 48rem) 250px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/E20200051_Conjured_new_photo_Cathy_Carver.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/E20200051_Conjured_new_photo_Cathy_Carver.jpg?resize=400,350 400w\" alt=\"Julie Mehretu, Conjured Parts (eye), Ferguson, 2016.\" width=\"1024\" height=\"895\" data-lazy-loaded=\"true\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div><figcaption class=\"c-figcaption lrv-u-font-size-12 lrv-u-flex lrv-u-flex-direction-column lrv-u-padding-tb-025\"><span class=\"lrv-u-font-size-14@desktop\">Julie Mehretu,\u00a0<em>Conjured Parts (eye), Ferguson<\/em>, 2016.<\/span><cite class=\"lrv-u-text-transform-uppercase lrv-u-color-grey\">PHOTO CATHY CARVER\/\u00a9JULIE MEHRETU\/THE BROAD ART FOUNDATION, LOS ANGELES<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s2\">Her goal, she said, is to create an \u201cimmersive experience,\u201d in which the viewer feels an \u201caspect of dislocation inside the painting. From a distance, you can see the whole thing. But as you come close to it, to really see it\u2014because it\u2019s made up of all these small parts\u2014you don\u2019t have a sense of the whole. You\u2019re immersed in what you can see and can only make sense of it from that place. I\u2019m constantly negotiating and thinking about how these paintings are viewed and experienced [in relation to] how I make them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s1\">Once Mehretu feels an altered image is ready to be translated to the canvas, an assistant grids off the canvas and begins to airbrush it so \u201cit\u2019s just atomized enough, so it\u2019s blurry enough that your eye can\u2019t really focus on it,\u201d Mehretu said. From there, they apply a transparent priming material that locks in the bottom layer of the painting. Over that layer Mehretu adds more layers of paint\u2014and she also subtracts. \u201cThis blurred [imagery] is immersed inside the painting and you can cover it up, but you can also go back to it if you need to,\u201d she said. She typically wipes or sands away \u201cmore than half, maybe double, what I put down.\u201d She refers to this as an \u201celement of trying to really unveil or excavate something for myself where I have a realization or see something.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s1\">Mehretu compares her process to trying to take a photo on an iPhone. At first, it\u2019s blurry and out of focus, and \u201cthen there\u2019s a moment where it comes into focus and you know exactly when that is, and you can take it. It\u2019s like that feeling when you\u2019re painting. When it\u2019s finished, you know that it\u2019s finished. You also have to pay attention because you can easily destroy what you\u2019ve finished, you can easily go too far.\u201d Sometimes a painting is finished in about two weeks, in other cases it can take months or even years.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"post-content-image \/\/ \">\n<figure class=\"o-figure   aligncenter size-full wp-image-1234594466 lrv-u-max-width-100p\">\n<div class=\"c-lazy-image \">\n<div class=\"lrv-a-crop-16x9\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-lazy-image__img lrv-u-background-color-grey-lightest lrv-u-width-100p lrv-u-display-block lrv-u-height-auto\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/IMG_5236-2-hor.jpg\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 87.5rem) 1000px, (min-width: 78.75rem) 681px, (min-width: 48rem) 450px, (max-width: 48rem) 250px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/IMG_5236-2-hor.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/IMG_5236-2-hor.jpg?resize=400,318 400w\" alt=\"Julie Mehretu in her Chelsea studio at work on Ghosthymn (after the Raft), 2019\u201321, which was created for her Whitney Museum survey.\" width=\"1024\" height=\"813\" data-lazy-loaded=\"true\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div><figcaption class=\"c-figcaption lrv-u-font-size-12 lrv-u-flex lrv-u-flex-direction-column lrv-u-padding-tb-025\"><span class=\"lrv-u-font-size-14@desktop\">Julie Mehretu in her Chelsea studio at work on\u00a0<em>Ghosthymn (after the Raft)<\/em>, 2019\u201321, which was created for her Whitney Museum survey.<\/span><cite class=\"lrv-u-text-transform-uppercase lrv-u-color-grey\">PHOTO: SARAH RENTZ<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"p1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/\"><b>Since the beginning of her\u00a0<\/b><\/a><span class=\"s1\"><strong>career,<\/strong>\u00a0Mehretu\u2019s work has involved a complex dance between abstraction and representation. She became known in the late \u201990s and early 2000s for her sparse ink paintings of fragmented geometric shapes that at once explode with color and reveal underneath, deeply layered compositions filled with architectural plans of civilizations past and maps of disparate modern-day regions. She views abstraction as \u201ca place for radical thinking and for radical imagining,\u201d and drew a comparison to the spaces Black artists created in music, particularly in jazz.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"post-content-image \/\/ \">\n<figure class=\"o-figure   alignright size-medium wp-image-1234594437 lrv-u-max-width-100p\">\n<div class=\"c-lazy-image \">\n<div class=\"lrv-a-crop-16x9\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-lazy-image__img lrv-u-background-color-grey-lightest lrv-u-width-100p lrv-u-display-block lrv-u-height-auto\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/IMG_5240.jpg?w=400\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 87.5rem) 1000px, (min-width: 78.75rem) 681px, (min-width: 48rem) 450px, (max-width: 48rem) 250px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/IMG_5240.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/IMG_5240.jpg?resize=400,533 400w\" alt=\"Aerial view of various colored paints grouped together in Julie Mehretu's studio\" width=\"400\" height=\"533\" data-lazy-loaded=\"true\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div><figcaption class=\"c-figcaption lrv-u-font-size-12 lrv-u-flex lrv-u-flex-direction-column lrv-u-padding-tb-025\"><span class=\"lrv-u-font-size-14@desktop\">In her Chelsea studio, Mehretu employs a complex and varied palette to create her abstract paintings.<\/span><cite class=\"lrv-u-text-transform-uppercase lrv-u-color-grey\">PHOTO: SARAH RENTZ<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">In painting, however, that radical space of abstraction has been forged largely by white men (think Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning). \u201cOne of the reasons I\u2019ve been so immersed in abstraction and insisted on it and explored it, is that it allows for this other space of complicated representation,\u201d she said. \u201cThat tradition, that form of trying to reinvent, that form of finding a space to explore oneself, but also what is possible in the joy of trying to invent and explore and create, is important.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s1\">She sees her own work as a space where abstract painting \u201cfolds in on itself and then maybe suggests something else because of that.\u201d That kind of space, she said, is \u201cnot something that you can actually put direct language to, but you can have these visceral experiences with it. That allows there to be a different form of possibility in it\u2014in its refusal of exact language.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s1\">In her early work, the source materials that Mehretu blended with abstraction tended to be architectural in nature\u2014images of buildings, or plans. More recently, she has been interested in the news, particularly news related to the world\u2019s ongoing migration crisis and the protests it has generated, as well as other protests, like Arab Spring or those in Ferguson and across the country in support of Black Lives Matter, all of which unfold in the public square, another of Mehretu\u2019s architectural interests.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s2\">\u201cPart of my interest in the blurred image,\u201d she said, \u201cis how it offers the specter of the image, the ghost, and a haunting dynamic that was captured in the image.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"post-content-image \/\/ \">\n<figure class=\"o-figure   aligncenter size-full wp-image-1234594434 lrv-u-max-width-100p\">\n<div class=\"c-lazy-image \">\n<div class=\"lrv-a-crop-16x9\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-lazy-image__img lrv-u-background-color-grey-lightest lrv-u-width-100p lrv-u-display-block lrv-u-height-auto\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/EX8601-VW009.jpg\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 87.5rem) 1000px, (min-width: 78.75rem) 681px, (min-width: 48rem) 450px, (max-width: 48rem) 250px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/EX8601-VW009.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/EX8601-VW009.jpg?resize=400,267 400w\" alt=\"Installation view of Julie Mehretu's mid-career survey at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" data-lazy-loaded=\"true\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div><figcaption class=\"c-figcaption lrv-u-font-size-12 lrv-u-flex lrv-u-flex-direction-column lrv-u-padding-tb-025\"><span class=\"lrv-u-font-size-14@desktop\">Julie Mehretu\u2019s mid-career survey opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2019 (shown above) and is currently on view at the Whitney Museum in New York.<\/span><cite class=\"lrv-u-text-transform-uppercase lrv-u-color-grey\">PHOTO MUSEUM ASSOCIATES, LACMA\/\u00a9JULIE MEHRETU<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s2\">For a painting she made specifically for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AtelierAuctionsg\">LACMA<\/a> iteration of her mid-career survey, Mehretu used photographs of the conditions in which migrant children separated from their families were being held at detention centers along the U.S.-Mexico border\u2014the bleak-looking bunk beds and common areas.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s2\">\u201cI don\u2019t really think of the paintings as being about [those things], if you will, but they become this point of departure,\u201d she said. \u201cThey both deal with the global migrant crisis that comes out of a lot of the basic inequities of our post-colonial world, and climate change and climate catastrophe and how that really affects and changes socioeconomic patterns for people in these places. These issues have been part of my work for a long time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s2\">A new piece for the show\u2019s Whitney stop, titled\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AtelierAuctionsg\"><i>Ghosthymn (after the Raft)<\/i><\/a>, 2019\u201321, draws from photos depicting anti-immigration rallies in Europe, but also contains direct quotations from Th\u00e9odore G\u00e9ricault\u2019s\u00a0<i>Raft of the Medusa\u00a0<\/i>(1818\u201319). Like numerous observers on Twitter, Mehretu has noticed how certain news photographs\u2014from the 2017 clash between counterprotesters and white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, to images of hundreds of migrants densely packed in waterborne boats\u2014resemble paintings from history.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"post-content-image \/\/ \">\n<figure class=\"o-figure   aligncenter size-full wp-image-1234594438 lrv-u-max-width-100p\">\n<div class=\"c-lazy-image \">\n<div class=\"lrv-a-crop-16x9\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-lazy-image__img lrv-u-background-color-grey-lightest lrv-u-width-100p lrv-u-display-block lrv-u-height-auto\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/JM_0190_20_Ghosthymn_after_the_Raft_2019_2021_Photo_Tom_Powel_Imaging_DH.jpg\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 87.5rem) 1000px, (min-width: 78.75rem) 681px, (min-width: 48rem) 450px, (max-width: 48rem) 250px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/JM_0190_20_Ghosthymn_after_the_Raft_2019_2021_Photo_Tom_Powel_Imaging_DH.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/JM_0190_20_Ghosthymn_after_the_Raft_2019_2021_Photo_Tom_Powel_Imaging_DH.jpg?resize=400,320 400w\" alt=\"Julie Mehretu, Ghosthymn (after the Raft), 2019\u201321.\" width=\"1024\" height=\"818\" data-lazy-loaded=\"true\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div><figcaption class=\"c-figcaption lrv-u-font-size-12 lrv-u-flex lrv-u-flex-direction-column lrv-u-padding-tb-025\"><span class=\"lrv-u-font-size-14@desktop\">Julie Mehretu,\u00a0<em>Ghosthymn (after the Raft)<\/em>, 2019\u201321.<\/span><cite class=\"lrv-u-text-transform-uppercase lrv-u-color-grey\">PHOTO TOM POWEL IMAGING\/\u00a9JULIE MEHRETU\/COURTESY MARIAN GOODMAN GALLERY, NEW YORK AND PARIS<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s2\">As an artist, she is far more attuned to the nuances of those similarities. Her paintings, she said, \u201cpay attention to the megastructure of history paintings that looked at these issues from the other side, meaning from the perspective of the colonial project.\u201d The news photographs, she said, are, in turn, \u201creally reminiscent of that colonial gesture of the destitute of Europe trying to go elsewhere.\u201d Putting references to history paintings and photographs in the same space, she said, is \u201cthis really interesting way to play with time and space and the conflation of them.\u201d At the Whitney,\u00a0<i>Ghosthymn<\/i>\u00a0has been installed in a space facing the Hudson River. \u201cWhen you look at the river from the city you can see Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty,\u201d Mehretu observed. \u201cNew York City still is a massive port of entry for many people.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s2\">In addition to history painting, Mehretu sees her work as being in conversation with the history of mark-making across the span of human existence. \u201cNone of us can make marks that have never been made before,\u201d she said. Whatever mark an artist makes is \u201calways referential to some other mark.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"post-content-image \/\/ \">\n<figure class=\"o-figure   alignright size-medium wp-image-1234594435 lrv-u-max-width-100p\">\n<div class=\"c-lazy-image \">\n<div class=\"lrv-a-crop-16x9\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-lazy-image__img lrv-u-background-color-grey-lightest lrv-u-width-100p lrv-u-display-block lrv-u-height-auto\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/IMG_5223.jpg?w=400\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 87.5rem) 1000px, (min-width: 78.75rem) 681px, (min-width: 48rem) 450px, (max-width: 48rem) 250px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/IMG_5223.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/IMG_5223.jpg?resize=400,533 400w\" alt=\"A workstation in Julie Mehretu's studio showing paints and an atomizer to airbrush.\" width=\"400\" height=\"533\" data-lazy-loaded=\"true\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div><figcaption class=\"c-figcaption lrv-u-font-size-12 lrv-u-flex lrv-u-flex-direction-column lrv-u-padding-tb-025\"><span class=\"lrv-u-font-size-14@desktop\">In her Chelsea studio, Mehretu employs a complex and varied palette to create her abstract paintings.<\/span><cite class=\"lrv-u-text-transform-uppercase lrv-u-color-grey\">PHOTO: SARAH RENTZ<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s2\">Ultimately, for Mehretu, the studio is a place for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AtelierAuctionsg\">\u201cdigesting\u201d<\/a> what is happening in the world; that process of digestion, ultimately reflected on the finished canvas, is aided by what Mehretu has been reading, which includes heady texts from Saidiya Hartman to Avery F. Gordon\u2019s\u00a0<i>Ghostly Matters<\/i>\u00a0to\u00a0<i>The Radical Imagination<\/i>\u00a0by Alex Khasnabish and Max Haiven. \u201cI\u2019m interested in books that are trying to think through a lot of possible futures around this condition that we\u2019re in,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s2\">One book in particular that she\u2019s been spending time reading and rereading is Anna Tsing\u2019s\u00a0<i>Mushroom at the End of the World<\/i>, which she described as \u201cthinking through the imaginary on the edge of destruction, studying this mushroom as a way to make sense of precarity and \u2026 to reinvent the imagination on the edge of precarity\u2014not in a pessimistic way, but in a super generative way.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s2\">The images Mehretu gathers as source material for her paintings enter a vast archive\u2014both physical and digital\u2014that includes maps, architectural plans, clippings from newspapers and magazines, and much more. Whenever she is interested in creating a new painting around a specific topic or issue, she works with a research assistant to build an archive for it. Someday those archives, alongside Mehretu\u2019s paintings, will serve as a testament to how one artist made sense of her times.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Source\uff1ahttps:\/\/www.artnews.com\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In\u00a0Julie Mehretu\u2019s spacious\u00a0studio in New York\u2019s Chelsea neighborhood, her sprawling, intricate abstract paintings hold center stage, along with the tools one would expect in the making of them: brushes, paints in a daunting array of colors, and a cherry picker that keeps her elevated at a painting\u2019s height as she works to the music of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":800,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,13,7,4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-799","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artist","8":"category-auction","9":"category-events","10":"category-gallery","11":"category-latest-news"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.9 - 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