Gabriele Evertz in Conversation
By Matthew Deleget

The following conversation took place over the course of several weeks during November-December 2019 and was later published in the exhibition catalogue Gabriele Evertz: Exaltation, MINUS SPACE, Brooklyn, NY, 2020.

“In the depth of winter,
I finally learned that within me
There lay an invincible summer.”

“Men must live and create.”

“Live to the point of tears.”

“Life is the sum of all your choices.”

“Freedom is nothing but a chance
To be better.”

“The absurd is the essential concept
And the first truth.”

– Albert Camus
Selected quotes from Return from Tipasa, in Lyrical and Critical Essays (1968) and from the Notebooks (1942-1951)

Matthew Deleget: It's such a personal pleasure for me to spend time with you discussing your painting practice, which I've watched very closely over the past twenty years. The title of your new solo exhibition opening here at the gallery in January 2020 is Exaltation, which is a quality I've very much needed in light of our current, relentlessly exhausting political and social climate. How did you arrive at this title and what does it specifically mean to you?

Gabriele Evertz: It is exhausting to continually fight lies and negativity, I agree, but I cannot let it dominate my work. I like to remember that Western aesthetic already began on a negative note with Plato’s attempt to restrict the role of the artist. And so you begin to look critically at established truths, and engage in the lives of past artists and how they dealt with all manner of adversities.

My understanding of Barnett Newman’s recognition of the dangers of Piet Mondrian’s striving for perfection, for example, was a revelation when he said about Mondrian that “the geometry (perfection) swallowed up his metaphysics (his exaltation).” You can differ with his interpretation, but it was his long struggle with the idea of perfection that moved me and the recognition that the Greeks erred in their quest for perfection. I recognize that a sense of exaltation has always been my modus operandi in the studio and how I try to live my life. In the absence of truth, there is only art.

MD: You expressed a fascinating dialectic here positing geometry and the strive for perfection in opposition to the metaphysical and a state of exaltation. I believe the works of many painters using hard-edged geometric shapes are often perceived by the public as simply mechanical exercises, but yours are anything but. Although meticulously painted, I never hear you speak about your geometric shapes in terms of striving for perfection. Your geometry is intuited and you paint your vertical stripes from the left side of the canvas to the right in a kind of call and response way. Tell me about your use of form in your new paintings.

GE: When you encounter color samples, they usually take the shape of little square chips. This makes perfect sense in terms of having four sides that offer comparisons with other colors. It seems to me that the square served as the best suited building block to create structures. When I decided to make color my subject matter in painting, I began by empirically examining single colors and their relationships to other colors. The grid was my orientation and the scale was determined by the smallest unit that, when multiplied and repeated several times, yielded the final size of the painting. This system is applied in architecture, much like the modular units in housing projects by Le Corbusier and many other modernist architects.

Around 1998 I realized that only two sides suffice to compare or contrast a color. The view outside my studio had changed and looking at tree trunks gave me the idea. From the beginning, I augmented the vertical line with diagonals. Occasionally I revisit this decision. The question arises why we generally consider an amorphous line more beautiful than a straight line. Of course, the straight line is an abstract shape and it seems a logical choice for non-objective work.

Some time ago, you and I had a conversation about origins and taking a glance back in history. I believe we agreed with the idea that human imagination begins with what we would now designate as abstract patterns and not with shapes actually seen in nature. It is fascinating to trace the beginning of how humankind’s creative faculties are set in motion and how, in our time, the first abstract painters conceived the line as an outline or border for color fields.

Mondrian suggested that if form is expressed through line, then the most tense line will give color its greatest determination. Line, like color, was essentially seen as an entity in its own right, an agent of expression. For him, it was the most perfect expression of the absolute. Seen historically, it was the final stage of achievement. In contrast, for Kandinsky, the straight line was also the original line, but it was at the very origin of the unfolding form. He saw the original straight line branching out into various shaped lines, which thereby indicate directions. For him, perhaps the fanned outline can be seen as a symbol of liberation.

I was very much taken with the line when I came across an illustration of a Native American woman using sign language by holding her hand and her other arm in a 90-degree angle to each other, which signified the concept of beauty. This gesture, expressing it in words as “man walking upright on earth,” gave me an alternative to the art historical references. But the line, or band, is not meant symbolically in my work. Rather I see it as a possibility and reflection of the viewer observing my painting. It becomes a dialog with myself. Formally, the straight line echoes the two sides of the canvas, confirming the parallel limits of the work and making it an object.

Incidentally, I once heard Sean Scully ask “who owns the stripe?” He volunteered the answer by saying “no one ‘owns’ the stripe.” Taken together, I regard my idiosyncratic references to allow for a kind of risk and total freedom to interpret each painting in a nuanced manner. Making my paintings requires a long time. In the process, I enjoy mulling over some of these questions and historical connections in my mind. It keeps anxieties at bay.

If the line makes the location of the viewer in space evident, a conversation is possible. Recently, I have combined the straight line and the diagonal into a zigzag formation. It still locates the viewer but for me, this shape evokes a heightened energy, a complex intensity, perhaps even fury, that seems best suited to express what I am currently interested in sharing.

MD: I really appreciate the breadth and depth of your response here and the variety of sources you cited. Yes, I do remember our conversation many years ago about humankind’s ancient urge to simply make marks on surfaces. The most natural one to create mechanically, in my opinion, is a short line using just one’s forearm, from the hand up to the elbow. Several lines made in proximity to each other, of course, begin to form a pattern and we’ve made everything imaginable with them, from petroglyphs to Op Art. As a species we’ve been doing this for tens of thousands of years and in every culture all over the globe. It’s something inherent in us and one of the many reasons I respond so strongly to your work. Vertical lines, whether straight or tapered, are your essential structure, but you infuse them with captivating color situations, which can range from tranquil to electric, sometimes even within the same painting. How have your ideas about color evolved over the past decade? How are you thinking about color in this new body of work?

GE: Thank you, Matthew. As you know, I studied with the best and some have remained friends to this day. I’ve been very lucky to find a supporting environment that allowed me to thrive despite it not being a favorable time for color theory. And painting was generally denigrated, as Rosalind Krauss reminds us. Nevertheless, I pursued my path. Over the years I have developed a frame of reference and set of beliefs that allowed me to persevere.

First, painting addresses the wonder of sight and color is a psychological and physiological effect. We see color with our mind. Its practice obliges us to engage with so many other areas of human experience, i.e. biology, chemistry, optics, philosophy, physics and history. For example, color in painting involves the investigation of pigments, as well as aesthetic and neurological processes involved in memory and perception. It is imperative to study the art history of painting as it is inextricably linked to color as presented in a kind of codified significance beyond the visible. But the momentous break came with abstraction and, consequently, the autonomous use of color.

Looking is habitual, but seeing takes a certain kind of mindfulness or concentrated consciousness, especially when it comes to perceiving color behavior in painting. I plan my paintings with an attentive viewer in mind and aim for their participation. When observing my work what do I hope for them to perceive?

In the early nineties, I made the decision to make color my subject matter. My entry point is the order of color as expressed on the color circle. I began by studying the history and theory of color, the twelve colors and their relationship to each other. I worked with the intense, clear colors of the visible spectrum and my first canvasses held a brilliant light that became more insistent with size. Of that time, the painting Greenport is a typical example of presenting all twelve colors to achieve a balance and an overall light that seems to hover in front of the work, meaning, in the space of the viewer. These color combinations seemed best suited to express my feelings of uncontainable joy over the fact that I could finally devote myself to painting after having removed some considerable obstacles.

When I changed from the square to the line, I noticed a pronounced movement across the canvas. In Dazzle or Restless, for example, I discovered that in certain areas the colors appear in their additive mixture. That is, a red, yellow, and blue painting, gives off a fleeting and unphotographable green, orange, and violet light. When I included the neutrals, the color-space became more pronounced and the very slim vertical and diagonal shapes yielded an out of focus reading, especially in the central area, when seen horizontally across the painting.

I thought about cinematography at the time and worked mainly with six to nine tones of gray. The next logical move seemed to call for combined hues and values to instigate a greater sense of aliveness for the grays. The painting, Grays and the Spectrum, presents the same gray sequences next to red, yellow, and blues in their respective responses. Paintings that addressed hues and grays in changing relationships followed. They offered a lyrical respite, lingering in the color or gray passages, gently moving or flowing outward with undulating motion. I Dream of Spring would be a typical example. This series led to investigations of pure light in painting that had increasingly unnamable colors, such as Clearing and White Light.

When color is mixed it becomes increasingly darker, but when light is mixed it is considered additive, meaning several colored lights yield a pure, white light. One of the first artists to recognize this phenomenon was J.M.W. Turner, the painter of light. He owned an annotated copy of the English translation of Goethe’s Theory of Colours. Goethe wrote about warm and cold colors, and the various ways they could influence the viewer because of their hues. He distinguished them as having a plus side and a minus side. Plus side colors are yellow, reddish yellow (orange), and yellow red (vermilion, cinnabar). Turner was interested in Goethe’s emotional understanding of colors and his use of a decidedly plus palette was presumably intended to invoke joyful feelings.

Most recently, I brought back the intense, pure colors of the sun spectrum as seen against a changing field of variously increasing or decreasing light. It seems, in this work, color has now merged indivisibly with shape, a zigzag formation. This is my most resolute work – entschlossen, as Heidegger would say – and I believe, my most ecstatic series of paintings. Resoluteness is seen here as an impersonal force that can open up new insights for painter and viewer alike.

MD: I definitely feel those intense visual qualities and emotions in your new paintings, which is supplemented by the contemplative titles you gave them, including Antidote, Dream and Song, To Know, and Before Quiet. For me, all of this points to an overwhelming feeling of optimism in your work – for painting, color investigation, and our role in it as viewers. You speak about the “the wonder of sight”, the “pure colors of the sun spectrum”, and your “most ecstatic series of paintings.” You also mention the importance of art historical precedents to you, but your works are made in the now and confidently point to the future. What is your hope for color, abstraction, and painting twenty years from now? And what will be our role in that as viewers and participants?

GE: Wow, twenty years? Let me just say, I believe you and Rossana are focusing the current exhibition season on several solo shows by living women artists and that’s truly commendable. I am also especially looking forward to an exhibition by a group of international women, all abstract color painters, scheduled during the summer months.

Talking about history, since painting has a long memory, there exists the danger of denigration, even total dissolve. Mimicking the outside world is no longer an option. Despite the want to expand the field, it is always an existential struggle, and in the end, painting needs to stay true to itself. What is exciting to me now is the return to knowledge and understanding after the hybrids.

Being swept along is not enough, Rainer Maria Rilke tells us. Research and experimentation continue. When we acknowledge some of the new findings in neuroscience, optical color phenomena and the psychology of perception in our painting practice, it opens up not only new probabilities but – what is more – it brings us closer to each other and our common humanity. The visual and physical events in the painting give rise to new emotional resonances. It seems, science has filled a void, but it cannot demand exclusivity. Recently, Bridget Riley has opened up the discussion by admitting the “unaccountable” into her explorations. Indeed, no matter how objectively paintings are planned, I find, the world seems to have a way to insinuate itself into the work.

Finally, perceptual abstraction is within reach of a global platform when it can activate the perceptual powers of the viewer. Viewing a painting in distance and duration, or space and time, is seeing with your inner self. You can read the painting in your own way, according to your cultural history. For one thing, sudden discoveries can reveal, say, the inability of the eye to focus green and red at the same time, causing long-held assumptions to be revised. Most of what we know is experienced through our own perceptional system first, and when we are giving ourselves over to the experience of color, it enables a self-discovery of new realities like the self-assurance of ourselves in contemplation. What we bring to the activities of looking deeply and consciously then can affirm our shared sensations and by extension, our own luminous universe. My paintings are experiential. They address the viewer as full partner who completes the purpose and the meaning of the work. My desire is to unlock the potential for others to see and engage passionately in untold visual discoveries.