JULIE UMERLE 'Cosmos or Chaos'

About

As the title immediately suggests, Julie Umerle's paintings exist at the meeting point of decision and accident (as indeed do our lives). In a new suite of paintings made specifically for the show, gravity and design collude and collide in a synthesis which calls up a most unexpected counterpart. Colours are chosen to oppose and confound, while the exact materiality, the weight of the paint interferes, patterning its own trajectory. The chromatic dis/harmony in paint, and the friction between these rivulets of colour summons up a quite different (ir-)reality, matching the glimpses of infinity behind the slashes in Fontana's monochromes; as the action of gravity, magnetising the flows of paint, closes or widens the gap between these streams of time and the space that opens whenever they part or fail to meet. Julie Umerle is an American-born artist raised in London. She studied Fine Art at University College Falmouth, Cornwall, and graduated from Parsons School of Design, New York in 1998 with a MFA in Painting. She then lived and worked between London and New York for a further five years. She is currently based in London. For this exhibition, 'Cosmos or Chaos', Julie Umerle received a Grant for the Arts award from Arts Council England to create new works for a solo exhibition of her paintings and to publish a catalogue to accompany the show. The catalogue includes text by artist, lecturer and critic, Simon Morley.