Marlene Mocquet at Alain Gutharc

Born in 1979, the pixieish French painter Marlene Mocquet graduated with honors in June 2006 from Paris's illustrious Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Barely four months later, 25 of her works were gobbled up at FIAC (Foire Internationale d'Art Contemporain), the major art fair held annually in the French capital. Galerie Alain Gutharc hosted the artist's first solo show last May, and Freight + Volume presented her New York debut this past summer.

While vertiginous, Mocquet's ascent is unsurprising, as her inaugural Paris exhibition made abundantly clear. Four large-format paintings along with 15 more modestly sized canvases (many less than a foot on a side, and all dated 2007) displayed a rare maturity and imagination. Disembodied eyeballs, cartoonish specters, four-legged beasts, winged creatures, anthropomorphized plants and otherworldly forms--the faces of which materialize only after concerted looking--cohabit with self-portraits in barren landscapes. The amorphous, gaping-mouthed visages emanating from lush patches of paint in Le Saut Orange Fluo (The Orange Dayglo Leap) and Bonhomme aux Punaises (Little Guy with Bedbugs) suggest Max Ernst's frottages. In La Fraise aux Tours Eiffel (Strawberry with Eiffel Towers), a sexy strawberry struts through a shimmering field of mini Eiffel Towers. Another work depicts two trees with eyes that literally pop out of their leafy heads as a menacing cyclopean presence sizes them up. In La Ville a I'Envers (Inverted City), Mocquet fashioned herself standing in all her girly glory (golden locks, pink hose, high heels, foofy frock) balancing an inverted cityscape on her enormous head like a superhero or a modern caryatid--an apt, if ironic, rumination regarding her artistic identity. Each work was executed with aplomb, employing a variety of materials and techniques. Thick, gooey passages of oil and acrylic abutted areas of spray paint, diluted pigment, or virgin weave, all of which were overlaid with gouache, resin, ink or glitter.

The off-kilter worlds Mocquet invents reek of faux naivete. Part infantile fantasy, part surreal nightmare, they belong to the tradition of Bosch, Redon and Ensor. (She admits personal penchants for Jean Rustin, Fabrice Hybert and Albert Oehlen.) Her esthetic objective: "To confront the spectator" with "universes that function on several parallel levels." Using a quirky visual repertoire and remarkable painterly dexterity, Mocquet accomplishes precisely this--and to startling effect.--Paul B. Franklin

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