Synaesthesia: works by Elana Gutmann at Perimeter Gallery

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Elana Gutmann’s paintings and works on paper are both inquiry and discovery, each a voyage: part memory, part fantasy. Her process is dialectic, the investigation of a truth through discussion. Choices are made, revisited, some removed. Their traces remain. Colour jumps to form, form instigates colour, relationships occur over a period of hours, days and months. They manifest in a “story” – a visual tale.

Her body of work spans works on paper, most often on rice papers and painting on wood panel. While they seem two quite different extremes - the solid, substantial nature of the wood and the ephemeral, floating nature of the rice paper  – they have much in common. The pigment on rice paper monotypes and paintings often take on a diptych or triptych format. They share a process of layering, transfer and sweep. In both, the surfaces share an important quality each surface is prepared, designed, to have a high fidelity in terms of accepting the mark, each having the ability to be “truthful” to the intention and to the moment those marks are made.

Her printwork in stone lithography and monotype has provided the path for exquisite quality. The monotype’s pigment on rice paper are created with etching inks and pure pigment. One layer floated upon the next, they are a kind of meditation. They borrow from her work in lithography and often inform her paintings. Gutmann’s process holds both rigor and magic, challenge and delight.

Synaesthesia, works by Elana Gutmann are on view at Perimeter Gallery 210 W. Superior