Artists’ Opening Reception, Saturday, April 18, 6-8pm

Couturier Gallery is pleased to present Resonance, a duo exhibition featuring gestural sumi calligraphic works by Alison Keogh and enigmatic binary collages by Maritta Tapanainen. Resonance (the synchronous vibration of a neighboring object) combines the varying disciplines of these two artists which share a visual harmony in their free-form approach to achieving an immediacy and sense of timelessness to their work. Resonance runs from April 18 through May 30, with an artists’ opening reception on Saturday, April 18, 6-8pm.

Alison Keogh is an artist who relies on the intuitive processes of her body: breathing, awareness and gestures to create striking sumi ink pieces while blindfolded. Having prepared different saturations of the ink- traditionally used for “shodo” (Japanese calligraphy and sumi-e painting)- she then hangs scrolls of cotton paper, up to 16' in length, in her studio to begin the "blind faith" process:

“Using less “mind,” engaging my body and having direct contact with the materials I am completely focused during the execution of the composition. While I exhale I release the ink from the container not knowing where, or even if, it will land on the paper. As in “shodo,” I have to make decisive actions with the throw, there is no going back. The work can never be repeated or duplicated…I am constantly surprised every time I remove the blindfold.”

Maritta Tapanainen is a collage artist whose source material is taken from all variety of outmoded textbooks, encyclopedias, tomes on the natural sciences, medical instruction, technical manuals and the like. In this series she exacts dual collages with only the slightest variances. These “doubled” works as Tapanainen describes them, explore her interest in the replicated form as facilitated by the mass-reproduced source material. "Doubled, they are in opposition both mesmerizing in profusion and becalming in duplicate."

“I am attracted to the arcane printed matter by the visual beauty and richness, by the soft warmth of the patina, and inherent fragility- its evocative obsolescence- visibly steeped with the residue of bygones. I embrace the subtle mechanical variance in hues, and find inspiration in antiquated technical aberrations, odd, inartful renderings, and engraved optical eccentricities. It's from these collected fragments that she begins her process of “deconstructed excisions meticulously cut to abstraction, reduced to line, tone, and texture to be reassembled anew.”

Alison Keogh graduated from Kingston University, London, UK and has exhibited throughout the west coast and internationally. Her work can be found in public and private collections, including the Whatcom Museum, Bellingham, WA.

Maritta Tapanainen shows regularly in California and New York and elsewhere in the country and abroad. She has twice received the Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant and her work is in both public and private collections, including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA.