Vicky Colombet
The French born American artist Vicky Colombet works across a variety of mediums, including painting, digital prints, photography and etched glass. Through the creation of abstracted surfaces, Colombet explores the topography of the Earth, along with the dual ephemeral and erosive quality of the Earth’s surface. Combining the reductive and repetitive aspects of the minimalist framework, her images are stripped of all traditional elements, thus portraying the fleeting moments found within nature, inciting contemplation, and questioning the concept of landscape.
Vicky Colombet’s work has been internationally exhibited in numerous galleries and museums, as well as displayed in private and public collections across Europe and the United States. In 2001, Colombet received a grant from the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation and was also awarded the DRAC Languedoc Roussillon. A member of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studio Program, Colombet is the recipient of the 2014 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. Colombet is based in New York City.
Series
“Nature is an Infinite Sphere Whose Center is Everywhere and Circumference is Nowhere”
In the mid-seventeenth century, writer Blaise Pascal wrote, “Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” Earlier, in the sixteenth century philosopher, astronomer and scholar Giordano Bruno wrote, “The universe is all center, or the universe is everywhere and its circumference nowhere.” And in the twelfth century, the theologian Alain de Lille borrowed the same formulation in the “Corpus Hermeticum” from the 3rd elemental theorems reflects the series “Nature Is…”, and draws on the enduring and boundless tradition of nature, as well as articulates the endless cycle of recurrence.
Cloud Series from Stieglitz’s “Equivalents”
A reinterpretation of Alfred Stieglitz’s “Equivalents” series, one of the first completely abstract photographic works, Colombet’s Cloud Series comprises of digital photographs that play on the ambiguity of what we see and how we imbue images with emotional and poetic resonance.
Paintings
Colombet’s abstract landscape paintings range anywhere from 5×7 inches to 78 square inches. All feature her signature technique of applying a combination of oil, pigment, alkyd and wax to canvas, the result of which is seemingly 3-D textures on a completely smooth surface.
Works On Glass
Vicky Colombet’s landscapes translated to glass evoke translucent drawings of light suspended in space. The act of sandblasting the glass becomes a metaphor of the wind and the elements eroding and carving the land over time. The glass translates the ephemeral nature of things, the light ever-changing what we see.
Colombet’s work on glass reached a monumental scale when she collaborated with Spanish architect Enric Ruiz-Geli from 2006 to 2012 on the “Villa Nurbs” in Girona, Spain. Her glass mural, the centerpiece of the non-traditional, high-technology single-family house, is inspired by an aerial view of the actual topography of canals, ocean and mountains surrounding the house.
Villa Nurbs
For the past two decades, Vicky Colombet has been exploring landscape in its representation and possibilities. Her surfaces reveal themselves to the viewer slowly, just as photographs develop in the darkroom. The artist makes her abstracted landscapes with a great sensibility to the surface, using oil and pigments to create a sedimentary topography on the canvas.
Colombet’s oils on canvas are, at first glance, a technical mystery. Drawing from Old Masters’ methods and a long and continued interest in physics, her technique has allowed her to approach landscape and painting both as a Minimalist, in the reductiveness and repetitive aspects of her imagery, and as a Land artist, in her use of natural materials and processes. Her more monochromatic pieces operate as pure abstractions, while others appear almost photographic.
Her works in glass are a natural evolution in her quest for light, transparency and the nature of ambiguity, inherent in how we perceive the world. Again with natural processes, she carves out the glass evoking aerial sites and states of change: wind, ice and water eroding mountains, seabeds, and deserts over time.
2015 La Base sous-marine Museum, Bordeaux, France
2014 Christian Duvernois Landscape/Gallery, New York, NY
2009 Dutko Gallery, Paris, France | Bleu Acier, Tampa, FL
2008 “Vantage Points” Evo Gallery, Santa Fe,NM
2007 “Difference and Repetition” Haim Chanin Fine Arts, New York, NY | Fidel Balaguer Gallery, Barcelona, Spain (catalogue)
2006 Evo Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
2004 Haim Chanin Fine Arts, New York, NY (catalogue) | Evo Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
2003 Meserve-Coale Gallery, Greenwich, CT
2002 Evo Gallery, Santa Fe,NM
2000 Zographia Gallery, Bordeaux, France
1999 J. Guhl gallery, Montreux, Switzerland
1997 Chateau de Servieres, Marseille, France
1995 Alain Margaron Gallery, Paris, France
1994 De la Gare Gallery, Bonnieux, France
1993 Busch Gallery, Berlin, Germany | J.Guhl Gallery, Montreux, Switzerland
1991 Busch Gallery, Berlin, Germany | J. Guhl Gallery, Montreux, Switzerland
1990 Rolf Wah Gallery, Paris, France | Corinne Timsit Gallery, San Juan, Puerto Rico
1989 Pavillon Ledoyen, Paris, France | Corinne Timsit Gallery, Paris, France
1988 A.O Gallery, Antibes, France | Corinne Timsit Gallery, Paris, France
1987 Mossa Gallery/Museum of Nice, Nice, France
1986 Corinne Timsit Gallery, Paris, France
1985 Excentric Gallery, Liege, Belgium
2013 “A Year in Preview” Christian Duvernois Landscape/Gallery, New York, NY
2012 “Coherent Surface, Radiant Light” Bernard Jacobson Gallery, New York, NY | “Of White” Nuartlink, Westport, CT
2011 “Design is Design is not Design” Gwangju Design Biennale Curated by Chinese artist Ai WeiWei and Korean architect Seung H-Sang. Korea“Cumulus Momentum” project, La Cité Radieuse/Le Corbusier, Marseille, France
2009 WAAM Museum, Woodstock, NY
2008 Art Paris, Haim Chanin Fine Arts, New York, NY | Haim Chanin Fine Arts, New York, NY | Jean Jacques Dutko Gallery, Paris, France
2007 Water & Dreams, Galerie Kamchatka, Paris, France (catalogue) Evo Gallery, Santa Fe, NM | Art Paris, Haim Chanin Fine Arts, New York, NY | Chicago
Art Fair, Bleu Acier, Tampa, FL
2006 St Petersburg Museum, Florida | “Black and White Abstractions” Haim Chanin Fine Arts, New York, NY | “Drawing on the Wrong Side of the Brain” Curated by Lyle Rexer, Haim Chanin Fine Arts, New York, NY | ARCO, Haim Chanin Fine Arts & Artecite, Spain | Art Paris, Haim Chanin Fine Arts & Artecite, Paris, France | Girona Contemporary Art Fair, Fidel Balaguer Gallery & Artecite, Spain | Toronto Contemporary Art Fair, Caroline Dimnik Contemporary, Canada | “Entre Chien et Loup” Bleu Acier, Tampa, FL “Bridge” Miami Art Fair, Bleu Acier, Tampa, FL (catalogue) | EFA Open Studios, New York, NY
2005 Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY | Contemporary Art Fair New York, Evo Gallery, NM | Istanbul Art Fair, Artecite, Turkey EFA Open Studios, New York, NY
2004 “Wind”, Haim Chanin Fine Arts, New York, NY (catalogue) | San Francisco Art Fair, Evo Gallery | Chicago Art fair, Evo Gallery | Art Paris Art Fair, Haim Chanin Fine Arts/Artecite, France
2003 Chicago Art Fair, Evo Gallery | San Francisco Art Fair, Evo Gallery| “Works on Paper”, Evo Gallery, Santa Fe | Art Santa Fe, Evo Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
2002 Evo Gallery, Santa Fe, NM | Matarasso Gallery, Nice, France Affordable Art Fair New York, Evo Gallery
2001 Original Gallery, Nice, France
2000 Nicholas Davies Gallery, New York, NY
1999 Nicholas Davies Gallery, New York, NY | Astarte Gallery, Madrid, Spain
1998 Chateau de Servieres, Marseille, France
1997 SAGA, Climats Gallery, Paris, France | Verena Hoffer Gallery, Barcelona, Spain | De la Gare Gallery, Bonnieux, France | Carre d’Art Saint Anne, Montpellier, France
1996 J. Guhl Gallery, Montreux, Switzerland | Alain Margaron Gallery, Paris, France
1993 Rene Metras Gallery, Barcelona, Spain
1992 Miami Art Fair, Corinne Timsit Gallery, Miami, FL | Kladno Museum, Prague, Czech Republic
1988 Art Junction, A.O Gallery, Nice, France
1986 Schwabisch-Gmund Museum, Germany