Gael Stack: Thistle

Moody Gallery is pleased to announce a new exhibition of paintings by Gael Stack entitled Thistle.

An artist whose work evokes both memory and the “gaps, sinkholes, and other chasms” found in our experiences, Gael Stack is one of the most accomplished American painters working today.

Her large canvases and smaller drawings use fragments of words and images, often layered over one another like a palimpsest, to create a visual language that explores the past’s implacable hold on the present, with what is unknown and unspoken occasionally poking through.

Serendipitous elements of graciousness and optimism also distinguish her recent work.

In 2011 the University of Texas Press published Gael Stack, the first retrospective monograph on the artist’s career, which has spanned four decades. Included are essays by Raphael Rubinstein and Alison de Lima Greene. Rubinstein likens her paintings to Freud’s “mystic writing-pad,” a surface layer that can be endlessly written upon, erased, and refilled, while the underlying tablet retains traces of all that has been written – an apt metaphor for the workings of perception and memory.

Greene also reflects on the theme of memory in Stack’s art, particularly the ways in which memory can evolve into forgetfulness and cognizance can become ignorance.  -University of Texas Press, 2011

Gael Stack’s work has been exhibited in museums and galleries both nationally and internationally, including exhibitions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut; the Menil Collection, Houston, Texas; Stedman/Hubbard Gallery, Paris, France; the Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, Illinois; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Janie C. Lee Master drawings, New York; the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas; the Blaffer Museum of Art, Houston, Texas; and the University of Arkansas, Little Rock, Arkansas; the El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, Texas; the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas; the San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, Texas; and the Tamarind Institute, Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Stack’s work is also featured in many public collections including the Beaux Art Museum, Saintes, France; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut; the Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, Illinois; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas; the Menil Collection, Houston, Texas; the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas; the Federal Reserve Bank, Houston, Texas; and the Federal Reserve Bank, Dallas, Texas.

Thistle is on view at Moody Gallery Saturday, October 24, 2015 through Wednesday, November 25, 2015. A reception for the artist will be held Saturday, October 24 from 2:00 to 5:00 pm with an artist talk at 3:00 pm.

Pictured: Untitled  2014  oil on canvas  76″ x 60″