Eden
Emerald Rose Whipple:
Eden
2014, solo presentation in
Galerie Jan Dhaese, Ghent, BE
Press
i-D Magazine, The Last Magazine, Dazed Digital, DeMorgen, H Art Magazine, De Witte Raaf
‘Eden’ is an oil on canvas painting series produced by Emerald Whipple for ‘Galerie Jan Dhaese’ in Ghent Belgium. This series marks Emerald Whipple’ s rst international art exhibition. Analogous to Whipple’ s previous works from her “Natural High” painting series, ‘Eden’ captures the beauty, innocence, and unruliness of youth culture. ‘Eden’ is a magni cent and candid representation of an uninhibited world. The narrative offers the viewer an especially intimate glimpse of a playfully captured universe of sensuality, recklessness, and the sublime. This exhibition is comprised two stylistic representations, portrait paintings of candid youth and still life paintings of desert moss formations.
The desert moss paintings represent carefully curated images of moss from the Ojai California desert where the artist spent her formative youth. Moss, typically only in wet climates, rebels against the arid desert and brings a small Garden of Eden to the environment. The paintings surround the other works and bring act as Garden of Eden setting for the portrait subjects. The portraits candidly capture models Hanne Gaby Odiele (IMG), Kasia Struss (Women), John Swiatek and Fernando Rodriguez and were originally photographed by Whipple, Dylan Forsberg and Megan Marie Dodge in New York.
The artist and the portrait subjects, immersed in an urban world of fashion, exist in a rebellious world of ecstasy. The energy of idyllic freedom and innocence permeates the series and recalls an endless chronicle of summer. The subjects in the portrait paintings are themselves the subjects of an odyssey of ultimate inhibition. By revealing the subjects through a lens of nostalgia, these paintings demand that the viewer re ect on his or her own timeless narrative in tandem.
The extraordinary density and richness of the moss techniques, as the artist has come to develop, are like a eeting dream of abstract vignettes of illuminated natural formations that oscillate between surrealistic and hyper-realistic impressionism. The moss paintings are viewed not only as purely visual compositions but also as a celebration nature’ s color palette and the fertile growth on the rocks as an untouched paradise.
This series showcases the stylistic progression of Whipple’ s pursuit of painting in the tradition of the masters of impressionism and expressionism– Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse and Claude Monet – especially the exaggerated layered use of predominantly pink and purple in the moss paintings. On display is Whipple’ s ever-evolving brushwork. Dry brush blending is coupled with dramatic light-dark tones that comprise a transitional experience for the viewer. Between this period and the present Whipple had focused on portraitures and rede ning her painting style from a uid, layered stroke to a pointillist vivid micro brush technique.
The earlier works display primarily blurred and subtle brush play while the later works layout stark and textural elements that translate for the user a unique painting language deciphered only by the experience itself. The harmony of painting as an experience, both creative and perceptive, is a key element as Whipple’ s techniques themselves nearly surpass content in inspiration for the artist and viewer alike. For Whipple, the creation of the painting overtakes the visual world where the present moment and the elation of the creative process continues to inspire the basic impulse of the viewer.
Whipple’ s challenge is to highlight the experience of observation both as a construct of inner re ection and as an abstract observation. ‘Eden’ assembles the unity of life as a metaphysical comprehension of nature that reignites the romanticism of beauty and freedom in each and every viewer.