return to lunuganga saskia pintelon · the geoffrey bawa trust and saskia fernando gallery present...

RETURN TO LUNUGANGASASKIA PINTELON

THE GEOFFREY BAWA TRUSTAND

SASKIA FERNANDO GALLERY

PRESENT

RETURN TO LUNUGANGA

AN EXHIBITION OF WORK BY SASKIA PINTELON

11 DECEMBER 2017 - 29 JANUARY 2018

For many years Saskia Pintelon lived in a house designed by Geoffrey Bawa for his friend Ena de Silva. The iconic house,

No.5 Alfred Place in Colombo, was perhaps lived in by Pintelon and her family for longer than Ena de Silva herself. Her

relationship with Geoffrey Bawa began during this time and in 1991, Bawa hosted an exhibition of Saskia Pintelon’s new

work at Lunuganga. In an incredible visual confluence, the paintings seemed like they had been made specifically for

the spaces in which they were hung. The muted dark textural colours became one with the lichen covered walls and its

carefully cultivated patina. The exhibition, hung in the garage, yellow courtyard and the art gallery was indeed a triumph.

The painting Bawa bought from that exhibition now hangs in the main guest room of the house. In the following years,

Pintelon and Bawa’s relationship only grew, with him spending many happy evenings in the house at Alfred place. Bawa

eventually went on to rent Pintelon and her husband Pierre, the Cinnamon Hill House in Lunuganga as a holiday home

for which she paid with paintings that still hangs in that house!

Channa Daswatte

Trustee

November 2017

Can abstract art be representational and non-representational? With regard to Saskia Pintelon’s oeuvre who is known for

chronicling, life and death and everything in between and who is known as a figurative artist the answer to this question

is yes. Her work sometimes veers towards abstraction and in Pintelon’s decade-long appropriation and interpretations

have made her work dissipate into something else than the pure figurative. She is often working on different series

simultaneously. Smaller figurative drawings, paintings, collages and larger abstract canvases. Even these abstract

paintings are representational of something.

In the series of 2009-10 entitled ‘Monsoon paintings’ she represented the sky, the rain, the ocean, the land as abstract

elements with just the echo of small phrases or words added out of her fondness of script.

The works on show from 2013 at the Geoffrey Bawa Foundation celebrating a return of the artist Saskia Pintelon to

Lunuganga after her 1991 show are a continuation of those 2009 paintings. They evolved later into the very colourful

works entitled ‘Hotpots’ and ‘Sea of Madness’ that were shown in solos shows in Singapore and Europe. The works in

this exhibition are monochrome, thinly applied and washed acrylic on untreated canvas. The images are fleeting, floating

streaming moments born out of the imagined and the accidental. They are reminiscent of the soothing rippling effect of

oceans, rivers and in that sense another part of the chronicling of life and nature in her adoptive island Sri Lanka.

Like in poetry these paintings leave room for the imagination. Linear repetitions, variations and dissonants are translated

in a pictoral language. Like in music there are notes, rythms, melodies, stillness. Like water there is fluidity and

chrystellisation, there is cohesion and individual drops, rippling and undulating liquid that flows off the canvas as if the

support cannot contain the myriad of possibilities beyond. The works have no beginning no end. They need no title, need

not to be named. They just are.

Spatial, momentary sectioned impressions born out of the stream of consciousness of the artist, a mastery of technique

and an expressive, creative process with spontaneity and a certain rawness. That struggle between the planned and

the unforeseen results in illusions, seascapes, mindscapes, visual meditative spaces for thought that balance on the

teetering edge of the mystical. The paintings transport the mind drifting from the rippling effect on canvas to a rippling

effect in the chaotic synapses of our thought process. Connecting us to our primal, soulful self. They have an inexplicable,

mesmerising, magnetic quality much like a fire or an ocean. The monochrome aspect has the quality to give the images

the sensation of a memory or allude to dreams. In that realm of possibilities and illusion that Pintelon offers, the viewer

is allowed to project and dream, to revel in contemplation, fall into reverie or relax in meditation. The viewer’s mind is

allowed to fill in the blanks.

Isolde PringiersCuratorNovember 2017

Is It Me You Are looking For, 2012, Acrylic on Canvas, 156cm x 189cm

I Want to Break Free, 2013, Acrylic on Canvas, 141cm x 156cm

66-44, 2012, Acrylic on Canvas, 205cm x 158cm

68-48, 2012, Acrylic on Canvas, 158cm Diameter

Couple, 2015, Chinese Ink on Paper, 42cm x 29.5cm

Friends I, 2015 Chinese Ink on Paper, 42cm x 29.5cm

Friends II, 2016, Chinese Ink & Collage on Paper, 35.5cm x 27cm

Friends III, 2015, Chinese Ink on Paper, 35.5cm x 27cm

Friends IV, 2015, Chinese Ink & Collage on Paper, 35.5cm x 27cm

Selfie, 2015, Chinese Ink & Collage on Paper, 35.5cm x 27cm

Passion, 2017, Watercolour on Paper, 76cm x 56.5cm

Did You Go to the Frieze Art Fair, 2017, Watercolour on Paper, 76cm x 56.5cm

Too Many Art Fairs, 2017, Watercolour on Paper, 76cm x 56.5cm

SASKIA PINTELON b.1945

Education1967-1971 Professor, St. Lucas, Ghent, Belgium1968-1972 Professor, Academy of Arts, Kortrijk, Belgium1960-1967 Art School at St Lucas, Ghent, Belgium

Exhibitions (selected)2016 Colombo Art Biennale: Conceiving Space | Colombo, Sri Lanka2016 I AM ME | Saskia Fernando Gallery, Colombo, Sri Lanka2016 The Missing One | OCA Office for Contemporary Art Norway, Oslo, Norway2016 The Missing One | curated by Nada Raza, Dhaka Artsummit Bangladesh2016 Disambiguation, curated by Saskia Fernando | Art Dubai 2016, U.A.E2015 Mindscapes | Yavuz Gallery, Singapore2015 They Did Make A Monkey Curry, curated by Joost Declerq | CAB Art Centre, Brussels, Belgium2012 Looking for the God Particle, Yavuz Fine Art, Singapore2012 Saskia Ferndando Gallery, Colombo, Sri Lanka2012 Faces & New Works | Saskia Fernando Gallery & Paradise Road Galleries, Colombo, Sri Lanka2011 Contemporary Art From Sri Lanka 2011 | Asia House, London, UK2011 Script | Amangalla Hotel, Galle, Sri Lanka2010 Getting to the Heart | Yavuz Fine Art, Singapore2009 Saskia Fernando Gallery | Colombo, Sri Lanka2009 Colombo Art Biennale | Colombo, Sri Lanka2007 Paradise Road Galleries | Colombo, Sri Lanka2007 Galleries Mirchandani & Steinrucke | Mumbai, India2002 Paradise Road Galleries | Colombo, Sri Lanka2001 Fine Art Resource | Berlin Germany1999 Paradise Road Galleries | Colombo, Sri Lanka1998 Kunst Huis | Ostend, Belgium1995 Solo Exhibitions in Colombo, Sri Lanka1996 Gallery Ingrith Desmedt | Kortryk, Belgium1993 Deutsche Bank | Colombo, Sri Lanka1993 Arte Fiera 93 | Jipian Art Gallery, Bologna, Italy1993 Jipian Art Gallery and Garden | Knokke-Zoute, Belgium1992 Arte Fiera 92 | Bologna, Italy1992 Europ’Art 92 | Geneva, Switzerland1992 Netherlands Cultural Centre | Sri Lanka1991 Arte Fiera 93 | Jipian Art Gallery, Bologna, Italy1991 Jipian Art Gallery | Knokke-Zoute, Belgium1991 Geoffrey Bawa Trust | Lunuganga, Sri Lanka1990 Jipian Art Galery | Knokke-Zoute, Belgium1989 Galerie de Caniere | Brussels, Belgium1988 BBL Gallery | Antwerp, Belgium1983 Solo Exhibitions | Colombo, Sri Lanka1978 Galerie Atelier 5 | Mouscron, Belgium1972 Salon D’Art | Lederberg, Belgium1970 Hotel Drouot | Paris, France1967 BBL Gallery | Knokke-Zoute, Belgium1968 Modern Form Gallery | Ghent, Belgium1969 Contemporary Art | Lederberg, Belgiumou

All proceeds to the artist of the sale will be donated to the ‘Building a Future Foundation’

41 Horton Place, Colombo 7, Sri Lanka | T +94117429010www.saskiafernandogal lery.com

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