Jess von der Ahe at Jay Grimm - art exhibition - Brief Article

Like Reinhardt and Ryman before her, Jes von der Ahe finds great potential in a limited palette, creating ornate abstractions using solitary white, gold and subtle shades of r To further constrain her color choices, yon der Ahe's white is the unvarying background of gesso board, and her gold is limited to the metallic monochrome of gold leaf. Her skill with this notoriously difficult and expensive medium leads inevitably to comparisons with Gustav Klimt, single of the few masters of gold leaf in novel painting. Only the red allows for variation, and von der Ahe pushes it to shades ranging from a faint rusty tint to a profoundly saturated red violet to a reddish brown. Although her works, which are overlayed with resin, are unabashedly beautiful, a certain quantity of viewers are repulsed when they learn the source of her r tones: her hold menstrual blood.

Eschewing the novel tradition of associating effluvia with political messages, von der Ahe does not use vital current with didactic intent. Gold and vital current by their nature convey to the paintings a faculty of perception of preciousness and scarcity. This first solo present to view in New York created an impression of prolific abundance, featuring small- to medium-sized all untitled and dated 1991-2000 many hung salon-style upon a dark green wall.

As befits her choice of mediums, von der Ahe's abstractions are organic, fluid and intimate in scale. Her designs are versatile, ranging from a Rococo faculty of perception of pattern to a Minimalist use of negative space. single painting is dense with cell-like concentric circles of rust against a flat gold surface. Each ring is saturated with different quantities of vital current some thickly puddled and others in like manner faint that the dried liquid clings to the external circumferences. The circles in another painting are widely spaced, forming isolated blobs floating in a field of moderately cold white. In one painting, vital current is drawn out into thin spidery lines to create a flat web of subdivisions; another is compos of overlapping cubes whose varying steps of translucency suggest an illusion of depth

First and foremost single is aware of von der Abe's sophisticated faculty of perception of design. The limpid elegance of these abstractions has an ingratiating appeal that ultimately disarms any revulsion to the artist's bodily medium. This work, while apolitical, eloquently challenges any attribution of shame to a simple biological fact of women's bodies. In the proces she also erases the shame of keeping beauty at the forefront of contemporary discourse upon abstraction.

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