BorderLight showcases artist Gilles Teboul's persistent decades-long refinement of the art of distancing in his painterly approach. In Teboul's recent endeavors, he pushes the boundaries even further by eliminating any trace of gestural involvement. Pouring colored resin onto canvases positioned flat, delicately balanced on blocks, he refrains from influencing its trajectory. Gravity gradually carries out its work, while the artist waits patiently for when the opaque acrylic binder is definitively fixed. In essence, the physical act of painting gives way to a procedure where color distributes itself on the canvas, following something akin to the acheiropoïetic tradition — the Greek term denoting a creation not crafted by human hands.

"Gilles Teboul has created a kind of alchemy," says art critic Éric Suchère, "a mixture of resin and pigments which he sets upon the canvas spread on the floor, carefully wedged so that it is as horizontal as possible. One must wait till the following day for the mixture to yield the color and its modulations and so that the painting — the pictorial object — can become visible to the painter. Even if the result is expected, the mixture, the temperature, a slight declivity, will produce an effect which is not totally predictable — be it successful or not. There is an act of deposition and a moment of revelation. The matter is deposed, material, and reveals itself materially at the same time. The color has finally emerged and fixes itself, has become surface and image. It has appeared and it is what we witness, silent and transfixed by that which is present but unnamable, it is just there."

Depending on the angle of light, the paintings shift dramatically within a spectrum of colors and hues. What appears as monochromatic is belied by the richness of tone that literally seems to vibrate under the surface. The picture plane appears to glow with its own illumination, making a close examination crucial to the viewer’s understanding and experience of the work. Light itself becomes the subject.

Nancy Toomey Fine Art