Julie Mehretu #5

Julie Mehretu in her temporary studio in the former church of St. Thomas the Apostle in Harlem, 2017.

"....
It’s a sunny spring morning, and inside a deconsecrated Harlem church, ­artist Julie Mehretu’s assistants are ­riding hydraulic platforms up the face of one of two ­towering paintings—canvases so monumental, at 27 feet tall by 32 feet wide, that Mehretu’s Chelsea studio could not house them. As the team painstakingly screen-prints tiny black squares in places, Mehretu stands below, ­parsing the frenzy of gestural black marks that she herself has stroked on.
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(bron: Architectural Digest, foto's Jason Schmidt)



"....
Soaring midair on a mobile platform inside an unused Harlem church, she has been working and reworking two towering paintings taking shape on opposite walls, a monumental commission for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

For the last 14 months the vaulted neo-Gothic nave has served as Ms. Mehretu’s temporary studio as she executes the most physically demanding, politically charged and collaborative work of her career.
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Ms. Mehretu made her first marks on the canvases in the days right after the November election. It was her shock that moved her to rapid action and she said the current “miasma” informed her improvisational language of roiling calligraphic brush strokes and erasures. She is interested in what “gestural abstraction” — her intuitive and personal expression — ”can conjure in this political moment,” she said, adding that the works “are trying to make sense of where we are in our country right now.”
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(bron: The New York Times, foto: Nathan Bajar)


Julie Mehretu in her temporary studio in the former church of St. Thomas the Apostle in Harlem, 2017. (bron: Marian Goodman Gallery)