Ruth Root

Galleria Franco Noero, Turin
Through July 31

Ruth Root’s paintings are connected to the language that refers to classical abstraction. In the case of the American artist, her references to Mondrian are strong as the deconstruction of her paintings become precise, geometric "zones".

Root – as well as Peter Halley – uses abstraction to create a contemporary investigation of the New York urban landscape. Her traditional codes take on a symbolic value. Her geometric structures offer a range of significant and mutable images. They are no longer interpreted as a significant and isolated order but as a vehicle for latent meanings. Within the work the artist introduces various icons that interrupt the rectilinear aspect of the work as well as the pictorial surfaces. They focus on detail as a fragment of the narration, and as a physical element that is overbearingly present within a structure that, at first, appears to reproduce the fundamental rules of "classic" abstraction.

In her first Italian solo show, the New York artist has created several oil paintings and a series of works on paper. In some of the paintings, Root reveals her presence through a cigarette that lets out a thin line of smoke. This becomes a metaphor of herself in the act of painting. In another painting, one notices the eyes of the artist – painted in such a minimal format that one needs to make a perceptive effort to notice them – which seem to be taking a hard look at the internal reality of the painted gray ground.

The colors she uses seem to be mostly bright ones, with a partiality for intense red which emphasizes a perceptive impact and lights up the painted surfaces. The oil paintings on paper are collages. Their contours are intentionally irregular, directly pinned onto the wall. Little square windows are cut out of the works on paper and they seem to be prone to spy on a fragmented reality. They continually try to find a different balance in the world to refer to the existing one.




Tiziana Conti
Translation by Holly Miller