Grace DeGennaro— “Platonic Structures”, Exhibition Essay
Grace DeGennaro: Platonic Structures
The Parsonage, Searsport, Maine
11 March-11 April
An artist’s practice can be defined by their beliefs. The way they make their artwork is imbued with their passions, and faiths. This is usually most evident to the viewer when we look at artwork that is clearly process-oriented, where raw materials and unfinished layers are used to reveal methodologies and ideas. Another kind of devotional object, these artworks come from an artist’s love for every step of their process— their practice. Grace DeGennaro’s work is neither raw nor unfinished, and still her practice is what she offers in Platonic Structures.
The exhibition brings to light a selection of paintings from DeGennaro’s series, Platonic Solids, completed in 2018. The paintings are focused, displaying geometric compositions rendered in oil paint and cold wax on linen. With patient precision, these evocative materials are arranged and structured, demonstrating how they exist within the rational limits of physical space. This is the basis of Grace DeGennaro’s practice. Each panel, collectively or individually, is indicative of the artist’s steadfast pursuit for closely examining and understanding the physical, three-dimensional space where we all relate.
Color greets the viewer first. In one composition, a blazing hot cadmium orange sits behind a stoic lake blue, contrasting the story of fire with the sublime memory of witnessing the ocean for the first time. In another, transparent circles of Indian yellow, the palest cerulean, a pure French blue, and an iconic magenta overlap like cellophane gels. Together, they recall the wondrous experience of watching an accidental, prismatic rainbow danceabout the streaming light in a still kitchen. Grace DeGennaro references this sense of nostalgic imagery with her color choices to foster innate, symbolic connections, and sets the tone for how abstraction and representation are equally present in her work.
This is the first clue as to what we may glean from DeGennaro’s practice; what the artist hopes for and believes in. She is looking for a balance of abstraction and representation. A way for ethereal ideas to find their level amongst this personal realm. The colorful and seamless illusion these paintings project draw the viewer in to look closer—and slower. DeGennaro’s work requires viewers to examine each piece with a stoic yet active pace. Platonic Structures asks for this same steady observation. A patient gaze is the delicate rhythm needed in order to discover what the paintings reveal.
What the paintings reveal are the Platonic solids: the tetrahedron, octahedron, icosahedron, cube, and dodecahedron.The five solids were first recorded by Euclid. Having “looked upon beauty bare”—to use the words of Edna St. Vincent Millay—he defined these five forms, or polyhedrons, as the basis of the physical realm, or three-dimensional space, for their qualities of geometric convex regularity. This means the forms’ lines and planes are all equal and even, perfectly balanced and symmetrical in their volume and occupation of space. It was later Plato, the solids’ namesake, who associated each of the solids with the elements: fire, air, water, earth, and cosmos. Plato’s connection between symbol and element then established the notion that all aspects of the physical world are composed of these five geometric forms.
A large component of DeGennaro’s process is researching this symbolic history that is so evident in the paintings. Imagine a studious monk pouring over pages of sacred scripture; DeGennaro even has reference books that she refers to as her “bibles”. With learned histories in mind, DeGennaro then takes to the meditative labor of painting. In Platonic Solids, every form and element is represented across fifteen linen panels that take the shape of tabloid paper and the gravity of sacred tomes. Yet, while the paintings relay a specific vocabulary through theimagery used, it is more important for the viewer to feel what the Platonic Solids are representing. This is how DeGennaro realizes each painting; not by knowing, but by listening to the work.
When the viewer takes the opportunity to listen to the work, we begin to notice the artist’s hand and her personal choices. We can start to listen to what DeGennaro was hearing. Suddenly the paintings’ mesmerizing patterns and optical illusions reveal specific choices that disrupt their seamless first impression. A line of lavender and grey dots are interrupted by four turquoise dots. An even circle shows the width of the brush used to lay down a wash of color. Gesture sits in a dried pool of pigment where gravity took hold in the painting’s late stages of process. As we take in these moments, questions arise as to whether these are the artist’s perceptions or our own. Are those really turquoisedots specifically selected by the artist, or is it simply the way I interpret that color, that dot of pigment sitting atop another and playing games with my eyes?
What you feel and what I feel are entirely unique to each of our own stories, and yet there are timeless truths that hold the capacity for connecting every personal experience. This is the “why” of the Platonic Solids, and the reason DeGennaro offers her practice to us in the form of these fifteen paintings. Like oil paint and cold wax on linen, we are all individually emanating our own unique luminosity. Each person in this three-dimensional realm exists with ideas and beliefs that are expansive and classically beautiful simply because of their existence. To have personal thoughts and then collaborate with others; to learn and grow, like transparent washes of overlapping pigment forging new hues; to venture toward the ends of our collective stories; this is the magic of being alive. Though still we remain, in this Euclidean space, where we must exist with certain physical constraints despite our spirits’ fervor to break free.
To infuse the ethereal with the personal is not an easy practice, but it is something to believe in, and it is simply in our nature. We are all simply the stuff of soil and air and stardust. With slow and steady focus, there are moments for making sense and finding clarity. Where your truth and my truth overlap. We “seek release from dusty bondage into luminous air” (Millay), and DeGennaro has found a way there. One based in a practice of what is sacred and real. Yes, the world is full of many infinite things, and it all comes back to five primary forms.
