JANOS GAT POP UP GALLERY
529 W 20th St. 9th Floor
New York, NY 10011

May 27 - 31, 2014
JUDIT REIGL
Drape/Decoding
with music by Pierre Bernard

May 27th, 7pm

DÉCODAGE - a dance performance

choreography by Natasha Diamond-Walker

with the collaboration of

Mary Carter, Eriko Iisaku, Juci Ispan,

Kit McDaniel

For Judit Reigl abstraction and figuration have always been one and the same. Drape/Decoding (Drap/Décodage, 1972–73) is deliberately, explicitly both. Reigl defines the seemingly indefinable in monumental yet weightless-seeming canvases that are neither paintings nor prints. Using the least amount of pigment from an expansive palette, she transforms a field of linen threads into deep space. While often likened to the Shroud of Turin (similar size and impact) and at times to Juan Diego's apron with the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe (matching technique and impact), the Drape/Decoding series has no religious connotations: the works evince a secular miracle.

The drapes of Decoding  (each measuring 140 by 96 inches) are imprints of the figures in her preceding Man series. As the artist recounted in a text for her 1973 exhibition at the Galerie Rencontres in Paris: First stage: Veil a botched painting of the Man series with a light cotton sheet. Second stage: Paint the visible side with tempera thin enough (the color, in part, traverses the fine weave and settles as a light residue, and in part clots up against the structural reliefs and protrusions of the ruined work) for the created imprint to be interior. Third stage: Unveiling. The painted side becomes the back, the imprinted the front.

The "decoding" occurred when Reigl lifted the drape and found the reverse image that had seeped through the cloth. The emergent bodies of Drape/Decoding are incomplete, transparent in areas where bare fabric is exposed. Suspended unstretched, the otherworldly figures appear to drift upward.

To find out more about the artist visit www.judit-reigl.com

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