Archive Exhibitions

Gems of Art at the Galerie Carré Doré

2011-09-08 19:34

What: Mirage - Artworks by Fareen Butt
Where: Galerie Carré Doré
When: 20 to 24 September 2011
Web: http://www.carredor-monaco.com

Monaco's Galerie Carré Doré is rapidly becoming one of the Principality's best-loved cultural venues thanks to its blend of exotic and intoxicating art openings. The latest in the series is the work of New York-based artist Fareen Butt. Born in Toronto, for the last fifteen years, Butt has been developing and refining an ancient artistic technique employed for thousands of years in ancient Japan (where it forms part of the Nihonga technique), India and Persia: that of gemstone painting.

She spent her childhood in California, but has also lived in Mexico, Cameroon, Canada, and Pakistan. She has travelled extensively around the world, exhibiting in Dubai, Pakistan, New York and Egypt. Understandably, her travels have been a huge influence on the way she works, but have also provided her with extensive subject matter.

Fareen Butt is the only practitioner in the world of contemporary art to make use of crushed gemstones and minerals such as emerald, ruby and apatite) in her paintings. She also uses precious metals such as platinum, gold, silver, as well as more rare elements - purple gold or minerals found only in meteors.

'The subject matter of my works,' explains the artist 'is based on the mountainscapes that are revered as significant in various religions - for example, Mount Sinai in Judaism; the Sierra in the belief system of Native Americans; and the Himalayas in Hinduism and Buddhism. What inspires me about these landscapes is the fact that they are millions of years older even than humanity and all its religions: their quiet presence alone is a testament to something silent and invisible yet with an omnipresence beyond human understanding'.



In her new work, Mirage Mountainscapes, Fareen Butt expands upon her foray into the visionary and hallucinatory abstract landscape through her signature lens of crushed gemstone, mineral and precious metal-based pigments. Inspired by aerial landscape photography, the Mirage Mountainscape Series (2009-2010) explores the sacred geography of Kailasha and Everest amidst the Himalayan peaks, the Egyptian mountain desert of Mount Sinai, and the pale granite expanse of the Sierra Nevada.

During her extensive travels in northern India, it was Fareen’s visits to the foothills of the Himalayas that effected a shift in her style from abstractionism to abstract landscape. Trained by traditional Rajasthani gemstone painters during her sojourns in India, the artist’s relationship with handcrafting pigment grew out of her pointillist methodology. 'I started doing pointillism in oils,' she explains, 'and as the stipples became smaller, I needed to find more innovative ways of working with the colors, needing a specific red or grey or blue. I started to explore how paint was made once upon a time, and took it from there. When I discovered these natural elements and how they have properties of their own, my artwork went from total pointillism to partial pointillism. Now I am so engrossed with the materials themselves that pointillism has become an afterthought.'


^{Mirage Canyon 17, Mineral pigments i.e. lapis, copper, amethyst, agate (2010)}

This is an opportunity to see Fareen Butt demonstrate her powerful intoxication with the creation and application of unique pigments. 'Expressed through the solid, exceptional medium of gemstones and precious metals,' she says, 'the works embody the opulent existence of permanence and omnipresence which permeate these landscapes. Like a mirage on the horizon, there is a more ethereal perspective upon the lands captured by these paintings.'