SANTA FE, NM.- TAI Modern announced its new exhibition Monique van Genderen.

In her debut exhibition in Santa Fe, Monique van Genderen creates a painterly language that is concerned with surface, finish, and continuing interventions within the subject of painting. With an abiding awareness of her materials, the artist’s nonobjective paintings investigate two-dimensionality and explore the intertwined relationship between abstract painting and its physical framework.

Intelligent and unpredictable, van Genderen’s paintings strike a balance between spontaneity and self- assured control. Strokes and drips play across a shallow space, a record of decision and chance. In her ceramic works, wall-hung clay slabs imprinted with the texture of canvas, the artist paints in glazes that are transmuted once fired. These materials offer a rich variety of textures and finishes as well as a process including more risk and less order. The works straddle the divide between sculpture and painting.

The LA-based artist paints in a surprisingly fresh palette, with mood-shifting shades that range from sublime, candy-like colors and glazes, to agitated or burdened muddles. Odd angles, irregular forms and dry brush strokes traverse broad expanses, and freeform gestures demonstrate a keen awareness of the edge. Fields of color have a variety of experimental interactions, from bleeding together to layering like translucent veils.

"She is interested in the support structure and the expanse of the color field as much as form itself," Lisa Kurzner writes. "[She establishes] nuanced relationships between the various supports and materials she has in her arsenal…In the end, however, it is the act of painting that holds the high ground, poses the questions and resolves some issues for this artist, who has mined the history of abstraction for her own vision."

Pervading her body of work is van Genderen’s astute awareness of painting’s history, context and possibility. As Jeff Frederick of Art in America noted in a review, van Genderen's works "are confident explorations by a skilled and thoughtful painter."

Monique van Genderen was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and lives in Los Angeles. She received her BFA in 1987 from the University of California, San Diego, and her MFA in 1991 from California Institute of the Arts, Valencia. Solo exhibitions of her work have been organized at Hammer Projects, UCLA Hammer Museum; Kunstverein Heilbronn, Germany; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; the Savannah College of Art and Design, GA; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; and the Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX. Her work has also been included in group exhibitions at the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland; Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Tacoma Art Museum, WA; New Museum, New York; Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; and in the 48th Corcoran Biennial in Washington, DC.