R. H. Quaytman at Serralves

The work of R. H. Quaytman (Boston, USA, 1961) is being presented for the first time in Portugal.

The exhibition presented at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, in the city of Porto (Portugal) includes over 70 works. It will open to the public on October 16, 2020 and will be on display until February 21, 2021.

R. H. Quaytman’s oeuvre points to the new possibilities available to contemporary painting. What is a painting, is it an icon? What are the means of painting in a culture saturated by visual stimulation, from photographs to the digital forest of signs? Is painting still a relevant way to share our history?

R. H. Quaytman uses mechanical reproduction techniques and the traditions of conceptual art to create several closed series of works, divided into distinct chapters. Each chapter is numbered to mark the passage of time and the gradual completion of the artist’s life and artistic project. She views all her exhibitions and the paintings presented therein as a creative endeavour.

Quaytman approaches painting as if it were poetry: when reading a poem, we notice specific words and realise that each word gains resonance. Her paintings, organised into different chapters, structured like a book, have their own grammar, syntax and vocabulary. While the work is demarcated by a rigid material structure – they are only shown in bevelled plywood panels, in eight predetermined sizes, resulting from the golden ratio – their open-ended content creates different permutations that result in an endless archive. Her practice involves three distinct stylistic modes: silkscreen prints, based on photographs, optical patterns, such as moiré and shimmering weaves, and small, hand-painted oil works.