Color is an Act of Reason: Jasmin Blasco, Melinda Braathen, Francesca Gabbiani, Reuben Gordon, Amy MacKay, Iliodora Margellos, Jebila Okongwu

Color is uncontainable. It effortlessly reveals the limits of language and evades our best attempts to impose a rational order on it... To work with color is to become acutely aware of the insufficiency of language and theory – which is both disturbing and pleasurable.

-David Batchelor

Baert Gallery is pleased to present Color is an act of reason,  a group exhibition featuring Jasmin Blasco, Melinda Braathen, Francesca Gabbiani, Reuben Gordon, Amy Mackay, Iliodora Margellos and Jebila Okongwu. The show as a whole is evocative of the luminous world of Bonnard. The title “Color is an act of reason” is pulled from the artist himself, who often utilized color as a response to the psychological nature of his work. 

Much like Bonnard’s work, the driving force of color unifies the exhibition. Although intensely personalized in regards to aesthetics, all artists experiment assiduously with color—a unifying linchpin in a celebration of chromatic expression. Color is apparent in each artist’s versatile applications, evoking memories of past intertwined with present. Apart from the obvious emphasis on a spectrum of vibrant hues, this show engages one through various shapes, rhythms and emotions. Together the artists’use of vivid evocative colors captures moments in time, creating portals into other worlds and inviting us to see spectrums otherwise lost. 

Avery Wheless, Los Angeles, August 2019.