POETIC PROSE:

SUE, LAURA, and SALLY

November 7 – December 28, 2024

Laura Bell, Sally Egbert, Sue McNally

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JENNIFER BAAHNG is pleased to announce POETIC PROSE: Sue, Laura, and Sally on view in Seoul from November 7 through December 28, 2024. The exhibition presents landscapes by notable contemporary artists Sue McNally, Laura Bell, and Sally Egbert. They carve their paths with clever takes on nature, combining authority with touches of femininity. Magical, explosive, and persuasive, these inquiries on nature pulsate with idiosyncrasies and inventiveness. The works infuse the exhibition with a theatrical flair, showcasing bursts of brilliance through a dynamic interplay of color and form with psychological depth and exquisite materials. The exhibition highlights the artists’ reflective moments and unexpected encounters with nature, evoking both exhilaration and tranquility while promoting pluralism and a sense of belonging.

Sue McNally draws inspiration from the perpetual struggle with nature, emphasizing that true understanding comes from observing and experiencing the natural world while trusting our instincts.  Nature, as a painter’s subject, provides McNally an abstracting freedom that is fleeting and fugitive. Her works depict time, space, and memories, synthesizing her visual recollections into chromatic harmonies.  She has painted landscapes for over 30 years, loosening her ties to traditional practices like plein-air painting. Informed by the hierarchies of abstraction and focused on the process of depiction, McNally determines which elements of the landscape should live in abstraction. 

Laura Bell probes the nexus of nature and anthropogenic change.  Deeply appreciative of the spontaneous and serendipitous, her work is inspired by the fantastical profusion and power of the wild world – chaotic landscapes born of our increasingly extreme face-offs with nature.  Our unions and collisions are volatile, fracturing yet brimming with beauty.  Bell investigates nature and life with unwavering honesty, through photo collages that serve as an entrance to a described moment. The call-and-response of the paint and the alchemy that happens on the canvas show a picture plane often in flux; the images may be a slow burn, but they are always the provocation for the brushstrokes around and over them.

Sally Egbert imbues the mundane with an uncanny atmosphere. Her work alludes to the untamed beauty of nature, lonely and sumptuous, with an exceptional sensitivity to minute nuances.  The works are soft and muted, like shrouded morning light.  They are observations from her daily surroundings, infused with ancient symbols and contemporary pep, and influenced by the palette of Giotto.  In her paintings, Egbert aims for transparency, movement, and subtlety grounded in images of nature. She invites the viewer to contemplate and wander in the multi layers of applied paints before settling on a deliberate image.  

POETIC PROSE: Sue, Laura, and Sally is an intense, poetic landscape of three perspectives on nature.  Each artist stakes her claim on nature, and vigorously argues her position on the picture plane.  The exhibition is a strikingly intimate and compelling display of landscapes that rediscovers nature in this significant and poignant era.