Opening reception: Saturday, November 5, 2022 from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Christine Nobel : dabs & systems
Text by Vania Djelani
Christine Nobel’s dabs & systems explores the connections, similarities and differences between the handmade and the digital. Taken from the foundation of the artist’s practice of exploring the relationship between the vertical and the horizontal, she draws on a variety of patterns to create movement through strokes. Still employing traditional painting and drawing materials— such as oil, acrylic, gels, papers and collage— Nobel’s additional use of the digital allows for a multilayered experience of space.
Playing with the notion of mark-making against the continuity of time, dabs & systems further looks to the digital as both a tool and a subject matter. In printing her own drawings through computer generated programs and layering each reproduction with a unique set of painted and drawn marks, the creation of the handmade and the digital are intertwined. Resulting in textured images that inspire a sense of vastness, Nobel investigates the possibility of expanding her medium into multidimensional planes.
Through repetitive gestures, the artworks Nobel creates rely on the conscious and unconscious movement of her body. There is a sense of breath in the way that the colours and dimensions are rendered. Her use of pigments, along with the use of soft shadows, creates an illusion of depth that emphasizes the connections between her hand-marked strokes and the expansion of the digital. With computer generated images being more quickly reproduced, Nobel’s handmade copy makes way for nuances within her imagery.
Enabled by the precision of her geometric patterns and grids, there is a sense of deliberate extended networks within dabs & systems. Further evoked by playing with light and sensorial immersion through her exploration of space on a two-dimensional surface, Nobel’s pieces combine exact calculations with spontaneity to create visual impressions. Viewers are invited to gaze upon the compositions and immerse themselves in the details of her hand and printed strokes. Vast planes of data, mapped by the smoothness of her colours and the subtlety in depth, allows for a perception of the infinite.
