A group of new paintings by the American artist Lisa Yuskavage is presented under the glass ceiling of David Zwirner’s Parisian gallery. These large-scale canvases focus on the theme of the artist’s studio and feature, through mise en abyme, the painter and her models, the painter as a model herself, the painter as a painter, and “paintingswithin-paintings.” In short, the artist is taking us to places that feel undeniably familiar, since the motif of the artist’s studio has been a fixture in the history of European painting, and even earlier in that of Ancient Egyptian art.1

In making this traditional motif her own, Yuskavage (b. 1962) further articulates her “reverence for art,” pointed out by art
critic Peter Schjeldahl in a 2001 article.2 The phrase emphasizes the fact that she seems to have voraciously taken in the lessons of the medium of painting, as well as the questions that it raises: How to reveal the abstract substance of a figurative painting? How to turn colors into extreme and soft personifications? And, above all, how to institute a silent, enigmatic atmosphere, relinquish actual models in favor of mental ones, and set the stage for the artist’s personal history of painting? These challenges seem to characterize Yuskavage’s work over nearly thirty years and have now reached another level. Rendez-vous is not only the artist’s first ever exhibition in Paris, but also an opportunity to consolidate her approach of figurative painting, all the more so because the French capital was home to many of those whom she references. Yuskavage has shown reverence to Gustave Courbet, Henri Matisse, and George Braque, whose very names pleasantly entice the art lovers that we are.

Full text can be read on Lisa Yuskavage website and David Zwirner.