Robin Curtil - This Must Be The Place

This Must Be The Place
(Robin Curtil, Melissa Meyer's, Marc Schepens - Launch F18 Gallery, NYC)

Through process-based abstraction, the relationship to collage and gesture is highlighted through the presence of the artists’ hand. Compounded gestures push against disparate applications of the grid, guiding the viewer through the act of painting as it oscillates between atmosphere and structure. The utilization of the grid in Robin Curtil’s work shifts from its functional structure to an active character that engages the gestural language that develops on his surface. Working from a history with collage, Curtil derive the material for their paintings from a repository of images that refer to reality, but no longer stand directly in contact with it. This process reveals itself within Melissa Meyer’s practice. Through a series of repeated gestures that build up into squares of color, her calligraphic marks ammas into loose grids that quickly fill the canvas, and often spill out onto an abbuting frame. Similarly, Marc Schepens uses substructures as a foundation for his paintings. Working additively, he carefully responds to a framework of repeating lines that weave across his canvas.

Marissa Graziano, 2021