FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims
June 26 – September 21, 2008
“Ann Craven is fundamentally a painter. She paints the moon. Sometimes birds, flowers, deers or diagonal colored bands. She painted 400 moons, not as an ephemeris, but as if the pale light of the eternal face summoned the distant or missing loved ones, in a nocturnal reverie where the brush plays master of the ceremonies. The works silently carry that emotional weight. Then the artist copies those same moons, to challenge a persistent painting demand that always wants to produce an original. This stubbornly repetitive work is imbued with great spiritual inwardness, a way of harmonizing the mind, the body and the breath, with a rigorous practice where painting becomes a strong tense in life’s physiological rhythm. She paints obsolete subjects as she knows the symbolic power of the images that accompany us, even the most insignificant ones: images without content kept by our grandmothers, for no real reason, the good grades the schoolboy proudly pins in his room… Her bird or flower series endlessly conjugate painting’s essential relationship between figure and ground, the vibration of dazzling colors that are all signs of time. As one color is applied Craven draws a diagonal line on a canvas. Nothing is lost, everything “is made painting” and all paintings are of equal importance to her eyes, be it a copy, an original, color palette, abstract bands or birds on a branch.”
François Quintin, « Une pensée pour Ann », in Ann Craven, Shadows Moon And Abstract Lies. Frac Champagne-Ardenne, Reims. JRP Ringier édition, Zurich 2009
Vernissage Thursday June 26, 6-10pm
‘Moon Shadow Part. 1’ a film by Amy Granat and Ann Craven – Screened in 16mm: 9PM, 10PM, 10:15, 10:30
1 Place Museux
Reims 51100
France
