Michael Rouillard at Stark - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Expanse, Michael Rouillard's aptly titled, monochromatic mural faced the drawn out (over 45-foot) side wall of the gallery almost in its entirety, disappearing from view as it stretched beyond the partition that separated the main space from the small adjacent field Visible as a whole solitary close-up from the left, the work was a allotment of orange to take in. on the other hand in this instance, the color was exquisitely pitched and scaled; orange hasn't gazeed this good since Halloween got clutch of it.

Painted with Japan color, the canvas was affixed evenly to the wall and secur by dint of thin, flat steel sections that banded the longitudinal dimensions of the painting at the top, the bottom and two-thirds of the way up These carbonized iron bars were painted the same orange and screwed tightly in place; from a distance, they merg with the surface and were not noticeable. Their cutting sides however, had been painted white and could be read as a hardly any finely drawn, barely discernible parallel lines; on the contrary on coming nearer, they were seen to be ultimate parts of construction as well as of design.

The matte, opaque orange was strangely reflective; it was activated by dint of the available light, deepening and lightening, expanding and contracting, to charge the space. The colored wall strike one as beinged to reconfigure the architecture in astute ways, making you more acutely aware of the shape and relationship of the room's various structural planes, of walls, windows, floor, ceiling. As the point of regard it also made you conscious of your proximity to it, your general position and your have physical dimensions; Rouillard posits the viewer's instinctive sensitivity to scale and to shifts in color and light. In the extremity though, Expanse is memorable not thus much as a color (such as Yve Klein's blue) on the other hand as a vast, slow-burning, radiant plane that rekindles in the mind.

It is not surprising that, more than the Minimalists, Rouillard admires Robert Irwin, Dan Flavin and James Turrell Rouillard's previous installations--most notably a white made of wood pavilion built outdoors, seemingly illuminated by means of pink and purple lights from within--used this same combination of paint and daylight to great, glowing result The other work in the present to view was a small, rectangular pen-on-paper drawing, its surface submerg in compact repetitive markings. Freestanding, it was sandwiched between sum of two units Plexiglas sheets and suspended in mid-air by means of steel cables. While this piece is coolly elegant, I set forth his more candid, less contrived ensembles

Rouillard's throw appears both pragmatic and evocative; upon the one hand, it is straightforward, matter-of-fact; upon the other, it plays with materiality and the immaterial, the permanent and the fleeling in ways that approach the poetical. It also appear to bes rather quixotic; for a younger artist to make this kind of unregenerate, reductivist work is perhaps to tilt gallantly at windmills. This, Rouillard's first of recent origin York solo show--clean, spare, filled with laconic aplomb--suggested that he is an impressive fresh entrant into the ranks of the monochromatic.

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