Born in Paris and based in
New York,
made his first real splash
in the art world with work that drew inspiration from another artist with
similar ties to France and the U.S.: the poet and tastemaker Gertrude Stein. In
1995, Alexis made his solo New York debut with a suite of paintings all based
on Stein’s writings, showing the world for the first time the full range of his
versatile style of abstract painting—swathes of muted, mottled, and saturated
tones, collaged elements, biomorphic forms, crusty impasto, figurative
passages, and scrawled phrases and dates. “Michel
Alexis ... clearly has talent to spare,”
The New York Times wrote. “His
problem is figuring out what to do with it.”
Some two
decades later, Alexis has come into his own, harnessing his ambitious fervor
for abstraction with a rigorous-yet-improvisational method. To craft his large
mixed-media paintings, many of which are featured in a new exhibition at Santa
Monica’s
Ruth Bachofner Gallery, Alexis begins by painting each canvas a solid,
neutral tone. In a measured, additive process, the artist then slowly builds
his compositions layer by layer, with an exquisite, almost musical attention to
balance and harmony. Mixed in with the delicately tonal elements, impastoed
passages, and calligraphic markings are handmade paper squares and rectangles
adhered to the canvas—even further complicating the texture of the surfaces.
Overall, the effect is one of satisfying tensions, the subtly gorgeous canvases
suggesting a mysterious symbolism just out of reach.
It’s a
testament to the singular poetry of Alexis’s art-making that his work has drawn
(not-inaccurate) comparisons to a range of visionary painters: some see notes
of
’s scribbles, while others place his flattened
abstract-figuration in the vein of
. Alexis also cites
as an influence, but at its
core, the artist’s work is purely personal. “The basic structure of my paintings is derived from a childhood
ritual,” he says. “Alone, lying down, I would stare for a long time at my
bedroom ceiling, a blank square ornamented by an intricate frieze. There, I
would effortlessly reconcile the minimal and
elements of the decor and combine them into
imaginary, enigmatic shapes, suspended between the lure of the void and the
exuberant profusion of life.”
“Michel Alexis: New Work”
is on view at Ruth Bachofner Gallery, Santa Monica, May 3rd–June 7th, 2014.