NEW YORK, NY.- Magalie Guérin’s painting practice has developed through sustained experimentation with the medium’s formal and ontological possibilities. Her interest lies beyond defined systems of representation or abstraction, instead seeking to emphasize specific pictorial relationships, including those of figure/ground, pattern/color, and space/edge. Embossed checkered squares and crinkled striations overlap and adjoin with limb-like contours and gradated forms; slices of vivid orange and deep green contrast with muted earth tones and soft pastels. Guérin describes a “pre-history” of texture, the initial foundation of paint upon which subsequent compositional elements shift, divide, and connect. This sense of cultivated interiority within each work is mirrored by the external, subjective experience of encountering it. Free from any mimetic boundaries, Guérin’s paintings invite viewers to construct their own narrative of signification, drawing new meanings from unexpected interactions of color, texture, line, and form.




Guerin’s inaugural exhibition at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., some mondegreens, is on view through July 28. The exhibition is centered around the phonological concept of the mondegreen: an instance of aural misinterpretation, such as a misheard line of lyrics, that gives the words or phrases new meanings. This process through which the unfamiliar becomes recognized, signified, and assimilated into one’s understanding of the world became the conceptual framework for Guérin’s latest series of works. The paintings in some mondegreens ask us to consider the creation of narratives, systems of internal logic, and the space between perception and the making of meaning. Guérin will lead an in-person walk-through of the show on Thursday, July 27th, at 4 PM.

Magalie Guérin (b. Montréal, 1973) is based in Marfa, TX, and holds an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute in Chicago (2011). Recent solo shows include exhibitions at Corbett vs Dempsey, Chicago, IL (2022); Amanda Wilkinson Gallery, London (2020); Chapter NY, New York (2019); Galerie Nicolas Robert (2019), Montréal; and James Harris, Seattle, WA (2018). Her work is included in the public collections of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, CA; Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, IL; The Art Museum of West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV; Collection Hydro-Québec; and the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec. She is the author of NOTES ON, a compilation of studio writings published by The Green Lantern Press in 2016 (second edition 2019). Guérin was awarded the Pace Award for a mid-career painter at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, RI, (2019) and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant and Chinati Foundation residency (2018). Guérin is represented by Corbett vs. Dempsey in Chicago, IL, and Galerie Nicolas Robert in Montréal.

Sikkema Jenkins & Co.
Magalie Guérin: some mondegreens
June 8th, 2023 - July 28th, 2023