JUDSON VEREEN
Bête Comme Un Peintre / As Dumb As A Painter

Opening Reception, Friday, January 11, 2007, 7 - 9 p.m.

Read Jerry Cullum's Review in the AJC

The Matre Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings and assemblage by Judson Vereen, opening on Friday, January 11, 2008. The exhibit will run through the month of January.
 
The exhibition will focus on the 21 year old’s latest abstractions, pairing them with recent mixed media assemblages.  Among the large scale paintings and sculptures, the show also boasts recent poems by Vereen, as well as a monumental painting which will serve as the exhibition’s centerpiece.  “This exhibition will be a departure for the Matre Gallery”, admits owner Rob Matre.  “When I saw one of his small assemblages at an auction last summer, I knew whoever was behind this work was on to something”.
 
This will be Vereen’s second one man show in Atlanta since his move to Georgia from Brooklyn in late 2005. Vereen’s first one man exhibition, A Calm In the Catastrophe, exhibited in March of 2006, proved to be a groundbreaking solo debut for the artist and left many of Atlanta’s art critics energized, excited, and looking forward to Vereen’s next body of work.
 
Bête Comme Un Peintre, a late 19th century French expression meaning “as dumb as a painter”, is the title of this body of work.  “I think it's humorous….. provides the work some context”, responds Vereen, when asked about the show’s title.  “Its mischievous I suppose. When I read the phrase, I immediately responded and was thinking about using it somehow.  It later came out to be the title”.  In Bête Comme Un Peintre, Vereen’s paintings take on a more patient, gentler tone when juxtaposed with the chaotic, expressionistic work found in A Calm In the Catastrophe.  Vereen says,  “The work is different, but I feel people will respond”.
 
Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Vereen moved to New York City to pursue a career in painting after leaving Atlanta’s Woodward Academy.  While settling in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, one of New York’s most diverse and historically rough neighborhoods, Vereen created a vivid body of work illustrative of the harsh, but inspiring environment, saturated with crime, noise, heat and culture clash.  Although bouts with violence, isolation and confusion were common, Vereen recalls these days as "Some of the most interesting and exciting times of my life".
 
This will be Judson Vereen’s debut one man showing at The Matre Gallery. 

IN RESPONSE TO AN EXHIBITION
 
The most recent work on view at the Matre Gallery, works of my own, are abstract paintings. These paintings range from the large to the medium and small in sizes. All executed in oil paint. They take the shape of their containers, their frames. They are geometric and grudgingly minimal in form. The palette mainly consists of two colors; Black and orange. Among an overwhelming use of black, realized through the multiple layering of many black shades, and the burnt orange hue, the whites and yellows are highlighted. They owe a debt to many color field painters as well as the later half of the Abstract Expressionists.  Only a portion of these paintings have titles, (Obscure, Manolete) while others have been left either “untitled” or have been given a name (Composition in orange and black), so they may be referenced.  This body of paintings, as well as three works of mixed media assemblage, was completed in the year of 2007 and is titled, Bete comme un Peintre.
 
Now let me get right down to it. The extent to which I can talk about these paintings is somewhat limited. It does not matter what I think.  It does not matter what this is.  This work is not “about” anything, nor could it be.  This is no piddling art school thesis.  I am no academician; the statement is on the walls.  There is no story.  I make work and it happens.  These paintings refer to emotion if anything.  Emotions that exist in between the cracks.  Emotions we don’t even have names for.  While I have no answers for you, there maybe something offered in the viewing of these paintings, that is, the opportunity to experience something.  What that something is to you may be very singular.  Wholly independent from what it may be to anyone else.

This experience may be dictated by things particular and personal: the psychological associations of the orange and black hues, the temperature of the room, whether or not you’ve had lunch.  You may not even experience anything at all.  These paintings are vehicles for thoughts and emotions.  They do not dictate or tell, but are more enablers.  What you see in them has much more to do with you than anything of my doing.  They are inviting by their very nature.  They are inviting you to use them.  They want to stir you up a bit.
   
                                                            Judson Vereen
                                                            January 2008