Opening Reception: June 4th from 6 – 8 pm

Octavia Art Gallery is pleased to present Beau Monde, a solo exhibition of drawings and paintings by Dan Charbonnet.

Dan Charbonnet’s art is grounded in the rudiments of painting. He strives to achieve balance between process and application. The construction process comprises actions like ripping, stretching, heating, stapling, fraying, and sewing the canvas, while the application involves the taping, priming, painting (hard lines, soft lines, washes, gestures), and curating color.

For Charbonnet the studio work, both as an object and compulsive action, is about being aware and being present. His creative process involves the distillation of experience and composing these moments into painting constructions. These arrangements of material, space, and color pursue harmony and intention. The creative drive is a destination and struggle that both exercise and nurture mental health.

Through construction, destruction, and subsequent reparation, Dan Charbonnet displays the experience of the painting and unravels it. Reminders of the array of textures inherent to the practice are crafted through raw margins of ripped canvas contrasting with hard edges of value. Angular formations continually relate to their four-sided boundary, remarking upon but undercutting its rectangularity. Pared down to a selective color scheme, ribbons of intensity fashion their own picture while suggesting potential palettes for alternate images.

The repetitive, rhythmic and meditative qualities native to processes of the medium are emphasized. Torn fiber indicates the action of stretching canvases while the recurrence of shapes signals compulsivity and echoed movements essential to painting. Agitated by rips and gaps in the fabric, the variations in pigment and consistency glimmer and bounce out of the grid while their rapport maintains the composition’s underlying discipline.

Several dimensions develop optically: the dim background, two layers of textile, and the simultaneous awareness of another view - one without depth: hued ropes enclosed by white, grey outlines cast by shadow, separation by darkness. Patterns emerge out of overlapping, mirrored complexions, and through time spent looking, one continually perceives these ever proliferating, oscillating arrangements.
- Eve O’Shea

Dan Charbonnet is a Louisiana native and graduate of the University of New Orleans, where he received a Master of Fine Arts in painting. He is represented by Octavia Art Gallery in New Orleans and Civilian Art Project in Washington DC. Charbonnet’s works are in museums and private collections across the country including the New Orleans Museum of Art, LA and United Therapeutics, NC.