CULTURE SHARE: The Grenchus Foundation @ Kate Oh Gallery ~ The movements of our roots by Anely Girondin

Anély Girondin, a young artist hailing from Haiti, is showing a series of works at Kate Oh Gallery. The works, many of which are monochromatic minimalist pieces penned on paper with India ink, recall silhouettes and rivulets of the wondrous and wild. Prodigious stems spring forth—whether they plume from trees, rope, or elsewhere is left unanswered. At times, Girondin’s bustling scenographies include patches of more figurative elements, with recognizable vines and branches breaking into serpentine forms that recall natural semblances. Curated together, the works seem minimal from a distance. However, upon approaching any one piece, the viewer is struck by the detail that Girondin imbricates her work in.

Stygian trickles of ink bow into one another, proffering different forms: at times, they recall torn-heeled branches, crooning into crooked hooks and vines, like the strings of a grape tree outcast along the wall of a forlorn and forgotten brick building. A number of the works are admittedly more minimal and ambiguous, comprised of patterns reflected and refracted, repeated into haecceities. Other pieces also veer towards more representational terrain. In one such piece, the artist centers the torso of a nude figure, their back turned towards are view; the figure is here shrouded in blossoming flora and fauna, a snake-like river of undulating trickles crowning her body. Despite their two-dimensionality and their neglect for anchoring us in the empirical, recognizable world, there is a serene naturalism to these works that is omnipresent.

A few of the works do also sport colors, however. Hence, Girondin’s realm is not one exasperated of chromatic landscapes altogether—they merely do not follow a detectable order.  One such extravert piece features flaxen yellow strips and a deep, cobalt blue that bursts beyond any kept borders; like strings, these colorful elements fall, a downcast pooling waterfall or cascade pluming kaleidoscopic threads. Whether the reams rise like smoke or descend like plopping beads of water in a pool is left open—gravity has little presence here. My favorite works are these prismatic pieces bursting with colors: crimson and cherry red linealities pierce through patches of verdant green and bluster brown. Any natural scenography gestured at is here made alien, with Girondin proffering an otherworldly array that could just as easily be a patch of wilderness sloping and, in serpentine fashion, plotting to thwart the canvas. Each work is a rebellious act, with deracinating elements of fantastical creation disparately presented, background and foreground collapsed into a dashed array.

At first glance, one might be tempted to liken Girondin’s works to those of Kara Walker. After all, like Walker, Girondin has a penchant for minimal black silhouettes. Nevertheless, Walker is closer to the world of representational realism than Girondin, and this is an important point of departure between the two artists. Famously, Walker’s silhouettes are of figures chosen to index epochs—often the darkest moments of world history and, in particular, Western history, which is of a piece with the history of capitalism and imperialism. Following Walker, these figures, wrapped in silhouettes, are often chosen to stand in for entire subaltern group privy to the margins of history. Girondin, on the other hand, does not give us such silhouettes stand-ins; rather, these are evocative, lush scenes that have a languorous, peaceful, and almost fantastical quality to them. They invite gazing and dreaming, and thus are an escape rather than a confrontation.

By Ekin Erkan

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