L'Herbe Folle 1972

Evelyne Axell made "L'Herbe Folle," with flat planes of color, which feels like a screen print but it’s actually paint on plexiglass. I love how the figure is laid out on the land, or is it a bed, or both? There’s a hyper-clarity to the shapes and colors, so bright and bold, yet it feels loosey-goosey in the way that it fits together. This tension is like looking through someone else’s glasses – hey, there they are! – to see the world anew. I like the way the orange outline of the figure melts into a blue pool, right at the heart. Does that orange line define or dissolve the figure? Hard to say, and that’s why it's so cool. Axell reminds me of another painter, Emma Amos, who mixed up color and figuration to challenge our ways of seeing. Art's not about answers, right? It’s about keeping the conversation open.