Galerie Nast 2016 Recent Works by Marie Laurence Lamy


Artists perform a type of magic that transforms inert materials into objects existing solely to be looked at, contemplated, puzzled over, and savored. In their hands, marble, bronze, or wood become works of sculpture; marks of ink, charcoal, or pencil give birth to drawings; watercolors, oils, or acrylics turn into paintings. The essential material transformed into art by Marie Laurence Lamy is paper, which she fashions into works that defy easy categorization. In looking at these objects, the viewer marvels at the inventiveness they display while remaining aware of and fascinated by the material from which they are made. From this simultaneity of perception arises the quiet power of Lamy's art.

The tactile surfaces of recent works by Lamy exploit the most distinctive feature of the form of paper from which they are made: cardboard, which Lamy separates into layers to reveal the corrugations that give this industrial product its strength and resilience. Though arranged by Lamy in endlessly varied compositions that resemble low-relief sculpture, the cardboard, normally valued only for packing things more precious than it is, remains instantly recognizable.

Unlike more common materials of the fine arts—clay, bronze, paint, or ink-- which have no fixed form or surface textures, Lamy's cardboard layers possess their own inherent patterns, formed by the ridges and furrows of the corrugated paper before it arrives in her studio. The textures of this mechanically shaped paper, which a viewer can scarcely resist the temptation to touch, vary from coarse to fine depending on the density of the corrugation. Cut into squares, rectangles, or thin strips, these textured pieces of cardboard, which Lamy often combines with smoother layers of paper, become interlocked units of abstract compositions. The visual interplay of these units is intensified in some works by ink applied casually over the cardboard ridges, adding purely optical striations that make sharper the pre-existing relief patterns of the material.

In many of Lamy's reliefs made from cardboard, color is as important as texture. This is especially true of works fashioned from small pieces of only one, two or three ridges each.

Some of these incorporate discarded paintings on cardboard, which Lamy has long employed for enigmatic images of figures and landscapes. Cut or torn ruthlessly into fragments, paintings that fail to please her are reborn as reliefs. The artist speaks of these transformations as a process of destruction that leads to a positive outcome. The dense placement of small areas of variegated colors, most of them chalky pastels, give these works intense visual power, like that of compact paintings by Paul Klee, one of the artists most admired by Lamy.

With great subtlety, Lamy's works embody a philosophical enigma central to our experience of art: by what process of perception and cognition do we see two things at once—the work of art and, on a different ontological plane, the material from which it is made? Quietly but insistently, Lamy invites us to consider how it is that we recognize assembled pieces of ridged paper at the same time that we perceive them as products of her imagination imbued with mystery that lies beyond the capacity of language to express.

Robert E. Harrist, Jr.,
Jane and Leopold Swergold Professor of Chinese Art History
Columbia University
New York, New York