Artistic Statement
What is Cotton? by A. E. Denham, D.Phil (Oxon)
For more than two millennia, image-makers were obliged to offer a mimesis of nature, mirrors of the world’s visible surfaces: as the historian Ernst Gombrich observed, the story of European art was until quite recently a story of making and matching. Today’s artist, however, is free simply to make - to attend to the created object itself as a thing of intrinsic interest, owing nothing to the world beyond. Nonetheless, the ancient project of mirroring nature still fascinates both artist and spectator: like Saliha Staib, many of us find ourselves ineluctably drawn back over and again to reflecting on and making reflections of the landscapes we inhabit. The strategies of painting this world have of course been radically transformed, but the landscapes themselves hold an enduring allure, offering up icons laden with human significance. Cezanne’s twisting Cypress trees, Constable’s stormy Sussex skies, the shimmering water-lilies at Monet’s Giverny – these are all much more than aesthetic objects of formal interest: they are living symbols of the ways in which nature at once sustains, entices, threatens and transcends us.
So it is, perhaps remarkably, still possible to paint from nature. Saliha Staib’s ‘Cotton’ series shows, moreover, that it is possible to do that both within and without traditional boundaries, both by mirroring nature’s surface and referring far beyond it. For Staib’s target is at once a natural object and a denatured one – that most Southern of natural icons, the cotton plant. It is lovely, of course, and so familiar, so local, so comfortingly our own. But as any Southerner knows, Cotton is also very much more that that: its pretty white surface belies a moral ambivalence and tragic history which can never be forgotten. This is not nature unvarnished, but nature domesticated and pressed into service for both grand and evil ends.
Look closely at the tension between what is appealing in Staib’s images and what is agitated and uneasy: you will find that she understands her target. Cotton: soft and pretty, billowing, benign. But also Cotton: the currency of the South’s greatest glory and it’s deepest shame, the vehicle of happy prosperity and brutal tyranny, our treasure and our tool of oppression and suffering. And again, Cotton: an accident of nature transformed for our purposes and bearing witness – for good or ill – to our Southern history, our battle with nature yielding progress, change and destruction.
Look at Staib’s surfaces briefly, without thinking, and you will find an inviting play of gentle colour, a waltz of pastel and flowing forms. Then look longer and think harder, for there is more: the small studies force upon you a closer look at strange, restlessly animate objects, embryonic, possibly sinister, the beginning of a half-told story. Now turn your eye to Staib’s larger canvasses, with their elusive narratives of social action: these very lovely, dancing beings are neither docile nor tame. They possess a dynamic of their own, moving us as they will, whirling and drifting like the figures in a fading dream. This is no still life: this is your living history. What is Cotton? Look again.
EDUCATION
1997
Classical European training
Classical European training 1990 Studied art at l’Ecole Quai des Arts, Mulhouse (France)
Studied art at l’Ecole Quai des Arts, Mulhouse (France)AWARDS
1997 Awarded 2nd Grand Prize of the City of Altkich, Alsace, France.
Awarded 2nd Grand Prize of the City of Altkich, Alsace, France.1996 Awarded 3rd Grand Prize at Wittelsheim, Alsace, France.
Awarded 3rd Grand Prize at Wittelsheim, Alsace, France.SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2011 Glassell Gallery, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
2010Dixon Smith Interiors, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Dixon Smith Interiors, Baton Rouge, Louisiana20091012 Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana
1012 Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana2008 Ann Connelly Fine Art Gallery, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Ann Connelly Fine Art Gallery, Baton Rouge, Louisiana2008 Grand Contemporary Art Gallery, Lafayette, Louisiana
Grand Contemporary Art Gallery, Lafayette, Louisiana2006 Ann Connelly Fine Art Gallery, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Ann Connelly Fine Art Gallery, Baton Rouge, Louisiana2005 Grand Contemporary Art Gallery, Lafayette, Louisiana
Grand Contemporary Art Gallery, Lafayette, Louisiana2004 Ann Connelly Fine Art Gallery, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Ann Connelly Fine Art Gallery, Baton Rouge, Louisiana2001 Ann Connelly Fine Art French Show, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Ann Connelly Fine Art French Show, Baton Rouge, Louisiana Private show, Houston, Texas2000 Private show, Houston, Texas
Private show, Houston, TexasGROUP EXHIBITIONS
2011 Wally Workman Gallery, Austin, Texas
2007 Selected Group Show curated by Jessrey W. Allison, Paul Mellon Collection Educator, Virginia
Selected Group Show curated by Jessrey W. Allison, Paul Mellon Collection Educator, Virginia Museum of Fine Art, at the Saville Gallery, Cumberland, Virginia.2006 National Juried Exhibition, September 8, 2007.
National Juried Exhibition, September 8, 2007. Juror: Henriette Hildisch, Assistant Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC2005 Nation Juried Exhibition, Holter Museum of Art, Helena, Montana
Nation Juried Exhibition, Holter Museum of Art, Helena, Montana Jurors: David Pagel and Polly Apfelbaum August 12-October 31, 20052004 Søren-Christensen, Julia Street, New Orleans, Louisiana
Søren-Christensen, Julia Street, New Orleans, Louisiana2003 Ann Connelly Fine Art Gallery, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Ann Connelly Fine Art Gallery, Baton Rouge, Louisiana Søren-Christensen, Julia Street, New Orleans, Louisiana2002 Ann Connelly Fine Art Gallery, Baton Rouge, Louisiana: for Of Moving Colors Production
Ann Connelly Fine Art Gallery, Baton Rouge, Louisiana: for Of Moving Colors Production Entre-Nous “Spring” show, Lafayette, Louisiana Ann Connelly Fine Art Gallery, Baton Rouge, Louisiana2000 Windy Morehead, Magazine street, New Orleans, Louisiana
Windy Morehead, Magazine street, New Orleans, Louisiana Ann Connelly Fine Art Gallery, Baton Rouge, Louisiana1999 Dixon Smiths, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Dixon Smiths, Baton Rouge, Louisiana European Salon of Arts and Nature, Mulhouse, FranceOTHER
2002 Of Moving colors Production (Orange) – Live painting presentation on stage.
Of Moving colors Production (Orange) – Live painting presentation on stage.2000 Of Moving colors Production (Green) – Live painting presentation on stage.
Of Moving colors Production (Green) – Live painting presentation on stage.1999 Of Moving colors Production (Lilac and Magenta) – Live painting presentation on
Of Moving colors Production (Lilac and Magenta) – Live painting presentation on stage.On the Edge of Beauty by A. E. Denham, D.Phil (Oxon)
Visual experience is our most pervasive and reliable source of information about the world we inhabit. Through sight we effortlessly navigate the comforting territory of our homes and neighborhoods, recognise our family and friends, do our shopping in the morning and admire the moon and stars at night. But vision is also our most common source of error, confusion and uncertainty. The visible world, as Plato observed, is never quite what it seems; even at its best, it delivers only the appearance of reality, never the thing itself. Saliha Staib’s new work explores the secrets of what is seen and unseen by the eye alone, delicately illustrating the tension between how things look and how they are or might be, walking the edgy line between the immediate and alluring beauty of the visible world and our uncertainties and doubts about our own place within it.
Staib’s abstract images, for instance, initially strike us as attractive, pleasant, even beautiful. But take a second look: why has that happy play of colour you first approached become now slightly uneasy, unbalanced, ill-defined? How has the settled form you spied a moment before now dissolved, leaving chaotic lines and textures in its place? These works organise geometric and other reassuring patterns against a pale, almost-monochrome background, creating an orderly scene that promises to reveal itself as some specific and familiar object or scene or figure – if only the viewer looks closely enough. But that promise is not finally fulfilled by vision alone: one may peer longer, look closer, think harder, but in the end it is left to each us to decide the what and why of each (seemingly) purposeful design. Like human personalities, Staib’s abstract subjects first invite and then ultimately elude definition, and abandon us – sometimes uncomfortably – to our imaginings.
Staib’s underwater figures perpetuate these themes. Or do they? What, after all, could be more ordinary and less mysterious than the pleasure of a cool underwater swim on a hot summer’s day? We first respond with a confident wave of recognition to Staib’s figures navigating through their deep fields of pool-blue: we know very well what this is! But the underwater world turns out not to be so very clear nor so very common, and it is far from very safe. A solitary and slightly ominous reality exists just beneath the surface – utterly still, strangely darkened, difficult to negotiate, and fatally dangerous. How deep is the swimmer’s dive? How far has she travelled out of reach of breath and light? Why is she here and where is she going? How good does it feel and how long can she last? These questions, of course, echo the unanswered questions in our own ordinary lives. To a point, and like us, the underwater swimmer both sees and can be seen. But the world she reveals is not transparent, and within it her voice is almost mute. Here as elsewhere, what we see is surely more than what we get.
