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Gretel Stephens at Jan Baum
Art in America, Jan, 2008 by Michael Duncan
With refreshing forthrightness, in her first major solo gallery exhibition, 62-year-old artist Gretel Stephens presented handsome abstract oil paintings on linen with rich metaphorical associations. Wearing on her sleeve her reverence for Mark Rothko and William Baziotes, Stephens channels the radiant colors and limpid forms of their work into paintings that evoke microscopic realms. Several of the works, according to press materials, are intended specifically to reference the potent renewing properties of stem cells.
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Echo (2006), for example, features two eggs whose edges seem in the process of melting into a deep green field, and One Dozen (2006) presents 12 small circles dissolving in a ground of burnished gold. Such transformations and shape-changing--like that of stem cells in the process of regeneration--endow Stephens's works with a kind of spiritual undercurrent. In Ecco (2006), a white egg shape within a large carmine blob shimmers with a hallucinatory fervor that recalls certain watercolors by Georgia O'Keeffe.
In other works, clusters of tiny white strokes resemble galactic bodies. Destination (2004) features an impressionistic, nebula-like haze of vibrant white and pale blue marks that seem to have invaded large red blobs suggesting blood cells. Radically leaping from the microcosmic to the macrocosmic, Stephens may be alluding to the shifting perspectives of meditative thought. For her, concerns about the physical body have wide ramifications.
Several works are more direct in their allusions. Within the Malevich-like squared-off cross of Verse One (2006), a patch of orange obscures a passage of handwritten scripture used in Mozart's Requiem. In Marker (2006), a composition of blood-red stains covered by a cross formed by rectangles of translucent beige, text from the same source stretches along the top portion of the painting.
Stephens's paintings seem lit from within. Against a beige raw-linen ground, Process (2004) features strands of shimmering, starlike elements, recalling Loren MacIver's magically illuminated paintings of candles and sparkling Christmas trees. Like MacIver, Stephens uses the translucent properties of paint to create mysterious plainspoken odes to light and life.--Michael Duncan
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