Pousette-Dart grew up in a family steeped in the arts. Her father and grandfather were painters, and her mother and grandmother were poets. The daughter of Richard Pousette-Dart, a well-known member of the first-generation Abstract Expressionists, she absorbed much through osmosis while also drawing her own inspiration from myriad sources, such as Mozarabic manuscripts, Romanesque paintings, Mayan and Islamic art, Chinese landscape painting and calligraphy. Refusing to be defined by one movement or aesthetic, she has pursued her own visual language with a poetic approach to image and format through abstraction. The experience of visiting the Southwestern desert of the United States proved to be a turning point in her work.
Pousette-Dart travelled to New Mexico in the mid-1970 and it became a place to which she constantly returned. In the late 1980s, after spending time working in the environs of the Galisteo Basin, she began to reconceive the structure of her paintings. Being in an enormous expanse, surrounded by distant mountain ranges in each direction, provided Pousette-Dart with an increasing awareness of the primal relationship of figure to horizon, the seeming curvature of vast space and the editing element of one’s peripheral vision. In the 1990s, she abandoned the rectangular format and began experimenting with shaped panels, adopting a language of form that evolved out of her perceptions of nature, its vastness, prismatic light, and the ever-changing dialogue between earth and sky.
The configurations of these 10 paintings suggest they are composed of separate panels as seen in Pousette-Dart’s larger works, but they are in fact singular panels which visually imply divisions. The drawing of shape and line within the panels resist serial repetition and each painting seems to have its own sense of light and its own particular stance, as though embodying a momentary convergence of elements that might shift and change in the next instant. Amongst the 10 paintings, two are configured in forms with a hollow on either the top or bottom edge of the canvas. Different from Pousette-Dart’s typical smooth, long curvaceous lines, the irregularity evokes the shape of clouds or elements of landscape, further extending the formal and poetic exploration at the core of her practice.
The dynamic sense of space and movement in these works is reinforced by Pousette-Dart's manipulation of colour, which shifts subtly in tonality from light to dark or warm to cool. Instead of a fixed palette, there is an identifiable quality of light through the interplay of blues, ambers, oranges, yellows and grays which translates as a carefully orchestrated sequence of change.
All the works presented in this exhibition are untitled, allowing space for individual interpretation. To Pousette-Dart, the power of abstraction is that viewers find their own way to connect with a painting while the harmonic convergences of line, form and colour set off a certain sensory connection which transcends a single meaning.
里森画廊上海空间宣布呈现驻纽约艺术家乔安娜·普赛-达特 (Joanna Pousette-Dart) 的首次中国个展，展出她为此次展览特别创作的十件全新绘画。普赛-达特在新作中持续探索她实践中的标志性元素——曲线型画板的艺术形式，表达她对自然世界的感知。艺术家将作品的所有组成部分融汇调和，形状、形态、线条和色彩之间活跃且充满动感的相互作用尽显于画布之上，试图勾勒出人们在大自然中感知到的变化、动态以及四周的光线。此前，普赛-达特于里森画廊伦敦空间举办的个展刚刚落下帷幕，展期为 2021 年 11 月至 2022 年 1 月。
普赛-达特的父亲和祖父是画家，母亲和祖母是诗人，她自小浸润在热爱艺术的家庭氛围之中。作为第一代抽象表现主义知名艺术家理查德·普赛-达特 (Richard Pousette-Dart) 的女儿，普赛-达特耳濡目染，并从莫扎拉布语手稿、罗马式绘画、玛雅及伊斯兰艺术、中国山水画和书法汲取灵感。她拒绝被某种艺术流派或单一美学所定义，而是通过抽象的形式和诗意的表达，追求自己独有的视觉语言。其中，游历美国西南部沙漠的经历成为了她创作的一个重要转折点。
普赛-达特于 1970 年中期首次造访新墨西哥州，之后频繁故地重游。1980 年代后期，她在加利斯特奥盆地周边地区工作了一段时间后，开始重新构思自己绘画作品的结构。天地广阔无垠，目光所及之处皆是远方连绵的山脉，这样的环境让普赛-达特愈发意识到图形与地平线之间原始的连接、辽阔的空间所造成的视觉弧度，还有周边视觉对环境的调整能力。在 1990 年代，她放弃了矩形格式，转而尝试使用异形画板创作，将她对大自然及其广袤辽阔的特点、光的色散现象，和天地间永恒变化的感知，融汇到作品当中。
这十件绘画的构型看似如同普赛-达特的大型作品那样，每一幅都由多个画板拼接而成，但其实艺术家是在单块画板上营造出了多个板块的视觉效果。画板中的形状和线条不拘一格，每幅作品似乎都有自己独特的光感和姿态，刻录下种种元素交织、杂糅以及融合的瞬间，画面中的一切仿佛在下一秒将变换消散。此次十件作品中的两件在画板顶端或底部留有凹陷，有别于普赛-达特典型的流畅平滑曲线线条，这种不规则感勾起了对云卷云舒、沧海桑田的想象，进一步延续了她艺术实践的核心——对于形式和诗意的探索。
普赛-达特笔下的色彩由浅至深，或从暖到冷，微妙变化的色调强化了作品中空间和动态此消彼长的牵制之感。艺术家所展示的不仅仅是一组固定的色彩拼接，而是一种依稀可见的光感，在蓝色、琥珀色、橙色、黄色和灰色的相互作用下，幻化成管弦乐曲一般的变化序列。
本次展览呈现的所有作品均未命名，任由观者发展出自己的解读和诠释。线条、形态和色彩的交汇催生了超越单一意义的感官联结，对于普赛-达特而言，抽象艺术的力量就是观众用自己独特的方式与作品产生共鸣。
