Monique van GENDEREN - A Sweet Sidelong Glance

Jean-Luc and Takako Richard are very pleased to present Monique van Genderen’s first gallery show in Paris titled “A Sweet Sidelong Glance” from March 9 to April 13, 2024. This is the second solo show of the artist in France after the one at the Consortium in Dijon in 2005.

 The artist presents mostly paintings from 2021 to 2024 from different sizes, all from Los Angeles.

Her paintings catch the attention first by their wide range of colors, soft and vibrant, and their perfect combinations.

At a closer distance each painting expresses specific ways to apply the paint and very different painterly renderings from light soft touches to vigurous large brush strokes. The compositions are perfectly balanced when few visual elements compose it or a multitude. Her paintings diffuse a sense of playfulness, beauty and endless creativity.

The paintings in the show are untitled. Most of her paintings are peaceful with strong colors softly deposed with a few curbed horizontal lines as in a landscape.The painting made in 2012 with a dark background has more straight strange shapes like paper cut shapes perfectly balanced.In Untitled, 2013, horizontal blue and light orange the blue color superimposes the orange like a light veil with transparencies.

A medium-sized vertical painting is traversed diagonally by a pale pink bar that separates two areas with tyrian pink motifs on a lagoon blue surrendings on one side and pale yellow-beige background on the other, with a third espace in the bottom right corner successive fluid blue paint  and beige dots areas on white.

All her paintings have these characteristics, a strong composition with a great mix of colors with diverse ways to add the paint, with ways which keep the previous layers on view.

Monique van Genderen’s paintings expresses a kind of oxymore with strenght and extreme softness, sharp shapes and delicate superimpositions and details.

Monique van Genderen is based in Los Angeles and La Jolla. She received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 1991. Van Genderen hash ad solo exhibitions at the UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Kunstverein Heilbronn, Heilbronn, Germany, -Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Chinati Foundation, Marfa; TX; Miles Mc Enery, New York, NY; D’Amelio Gallery, New York, NY; and Michael Janssen Gallery, Berlin.

Her work has also been included in group exhibitions with the Kunstverein Rosa Luxembourg Platz, Berlin; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND), Los Angeles, CA; Kunstmuseum St.Gallen, Switzerland; Japanese American Nqational Museum, Los Angeles, CA; and the the 48th Corcoran Biennial in Washington, DC. Hes work is currently on view as part of the Muals of La Jolla in San Diego County, CA.