Julien Gardair & Melanie Vote @ DFN Gallery, NYC
A Critical Review
Rick Davidman’s DFN gallery has a rich history that traces back to its first SoHo iteration that opened in 1995. From there it was off to Tribeca in 2001 & then again onto Chelsea in 2006. You’ve got to hand it to any gallery that has the legs to survive NYC for 28 years without becoming pretentious or being swallowed up by corporate shills. Plus, DFN has been a springboard for some of the most successful representational artists of the last 20 years. Since 2009 the gallery has been operating out of the garden level of 79th street between Madison and 5th Ave as DFN Projects. It’s a pretty swanky neighborhood & DFN is a welcome relief from the ostentatious old-world opulence dominating everywhere else you look around the block. It’s a stone’s throw from the Met, so if you haven’t been there, I’m sure you’ve at least seen a picture of 5th Ave. on the interwebs so use your imagination to paint yourself a picture.
On view at DFN through Nov. 5th is a great two person show by husband & wife artists Julien Gardair & Melanie Vote. The show is called “Concurrence” & it is exactly what it says it is so no funny business here. Curated and presented by Garvey/Simon, Vote & Gardair’s work pair very well together despite this first collaboration for the couple. And that’s no small feat considering Vote’s work is a master class in figurative/landscape representational oil painting & Gardair’s is masterwork of conceptual abstract textile collage. Although vastly different in content, the work of both artists is similar in intimate scale & palatte. The scale makes you have to get up nice & close to observe all the lovely hidden details & there’s only room for one person at a time in front of each piece so there’s an inherent intimacy built in between the work & the viewer. The heavy emphasis on patterned tree bark & the wonderful chaotic nature of wilderness in Vote’s work echo’s the seemingly arbitrary & sometimes clearly purposeful light geometric patterning of Gardair’s collages. Or does the echo go the other way around. Let me know what you think in the comments below. For a couple that individually pursue very different artistic interests, it’s kind of beautiful to see work by two lovebirds who are more likely than not unconsciously influencing each other’s practice & are only just now realizing how much more they have in common than they ever knew.
