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拍品专文
“…in paintings of interiors there is a sort of portraiture that takes place in what people choose to put on display. I love the idea that those objects either define who they are or who they aspire to be.” Hilary Pecis (H. Pecis quoted in Nancy Gamboa, “Hilary Pecis Captures the Layers of Los Angeles’s Landscapes,” Cultured, June 23, 2021, https://www.culturedmag.com/article/2021⁄6/23/hilary-pecis).
Hilary Pecis’s practice has revolutionized contemporary representational painting with her exciting studies of finely-rendered interior scenes. In Wine at J’s, bold, saturated colors permeate an evenly lit interior rich in vibrant patterns and textures. The work offers a familiarizing glimpse into an intimate scene, with accumulated objects atop both the coffee table and fireplace mantel meticulously rendered with a sense of welcoming immediacy beckoning the viewer into the picture. Providing a fresh update to the time-honored tradition of still life painting, Pecis infuses her canvases with rich domestic scenes evacuated of figures, allowing the books, candles, vases, and wine glasses left behind to open a window onto these anonymous characters’ lives. Her vibrant palette recalls Hockney and Matisse, while her devotion to the detailed depiction of each object within her tableau reminds one of Cezanne’s table scenes. Pecis delights in detail, offering a surfeit of patterned decorative objects amid scores of art books to celebrate the subtle beauty found in the quotidian.
Born in San Francisco and now living in Los Angeles, Pecis paints her pictures from single images she takes of her life with her iPhone. Working from one reference point allows her to create her idiosyncratic perspective. She captivatingly recreates her reality witnessed from her phone camera onto the flat picture pane, allowing her viewer to glimpse her life from her own point of view. From this method, Pecis establishes an engrossing verisimilitude sanctioned by the interactions between her objects. The lone animate presence in this work, the white cat peering out intently from its perch atop the rightmost bookshelf, is a recurring motif in Pecis’ work, where cats enhance the work’s verisimilar atmosphere.
Pecis integrates three paintings within Wine at J’s. The large central Fauvist scene above the fireplace alludes to Pecis’ study of the movement, while the seascape to the left coupled with the starfish placed in the center of the mantel situates the scene in the sun-drenched coast of southern California. Pecis’ pictures-within-pictures assist in granting the painting a sense of place and specificity, similar to how Vermeer uses the trope within his interiors as keys to understanding his compositions as a whole, as seen in A Young Woman Seated at the Virginal at the National Gallery, London. This practice similarly allows the artist to imitate disparate artistic styles within a singular work of art: “Still lifes and interiors are deeply rooted in the history of representational painting. There are all these opportunities to noodle away at other artists' or artisans' mark-making, trying to depict something that isn't mine—fonts, or handicrafts, or textiles. It's an opportunity to further my own vocabulary. I get to try out different marks and be a tourist in other people's paintings” (H. Pecis, in conversation with K. Rosenberg, Artful, JUNE 3, 2020).
Pecis’s radical perspective, wherein her coffee table seems to collapse toward the viewer, holds the table-bound objects in space against the seeming weight of gravity. She inserts her viewer directly into the picture, inviting us to a seat and stewardship of the almost-vanquished glass of Amédée Plan de Dieu 2016 perched next to an open catalogue. With this daring insertion of the viewer within the composition, Wine at J’s operates similarly to Velázquez’s Las Meninas or Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait where the viewer becomes a part of the composition—yet while the viewer functions as either the Spanish monarch posing for a portrait or a witness of marital vows in Pecis’s antecedents, here we are ensconced in the domestic comfort of a friend’s living room, party to an intimate conversation. The relationship between viewer and tableau here is as complex as in Velázquez; an open catalogue offers a view of van Gogh’s La Berceuse, granting ample comparison between the Dutch artist’s brilliant floral background, Pecis’s vibrant bouquet of red poppies, and the fictive floral still life hung in the upper right. Wine at J’s is a semiotician’s paradise, each depicted object a referent in a web of interrelated meaning as rich as a Northern Renaissance panel painting. The work’s rich complexity offers limitless scope for interpretation and aesthetic enjoyment, granting the viewer a private escape into her private world.
Hilary Pecis’s practice has revolutionized contemporary representational painting with her exciting studies of finely-rendered interior scenes. In Wine at J’s, bold, saturated colors permeate an evenly lit interior rich in vibrant patterns and textures. The work offers a familiarizing glimpse into an intimate scene, with accumulated objects atop both the coffee table and fireplace mantel meticulously rendered with a sense of welcoming immediacy beckoning the viewer into the picture. Providing a fresh update to the time-honored tradition of still life painting, Pecis infuses her canvases with rich domestic scenes evacuated of figures, allowing the books, candles, vases, and wine glasses left behind to open a window onto these anonymous characters’ lives. Her vibrant palette recalls Hockney and Matisse, while her devotion to the detailed depiction of each object within her tableau reminds one of Cezanne’s table scenes. Pecis delights in detail, offering a surfeit of patterned decorative objects amid scores of art books to celebrate the subtle beauty found in the quotidian.
Born in San Francisco and now living in Los Angeles, Pecis paints her pictures from single images she takes of her life with her iPhone. Working from one reference point allows her to create her idiosyncratic perspective. She captivatingly recreates her reality witnessed from her phone camera onto the flat picture pane, allowing her viewer to glimpse her life from her own point of view. From this method, Pecis establishes an engrossing verisimilitude sanctioned by the interactions between her objects. The lone animate presence in this work, the white cat peering out intently from its perch atop the rightmost bookshelf, is a recurring motif in Pecis’ work, where cats enhance the work’s verisimilar atmosphere.
Pecis integrates three paintings within Wine at J’s. The large central Fauvist scene above the fireplace alludes to Pecis’ study of the movement, while the seascape to the left coupled with the starfish placed in the center of the mantel situates the scene in the sun-drenched coast of southern California. Pecis’ pictures-within-pictures assist in granting the painting a sense of place and specificity, similar to how Vermeer uses the trope within his interiors as keys to understanding his compositions as a whole, as seen in A Young Woman Seated at the Virginal at the National Gallery, London. This practice similarly allows the artist to imitate disparate artistic styles within a singular work of art: “Still lifes and interiors are deeply rooted in the history of representational painting. There are all these opportunities to noodle away at other artists' or artisans' mark-making, trying to depict something that isn't mine—fonts, or handicrafts, or textiles. It's an opportunity to further my own vocabulary. I get to try out different marks and be a tourist in other people's paintings” (H. Pecis, in conversation with K. Rosenberg, Artful, JUNE 3, 2020).
Pecis’s radical perspective, wherein her coffee table seems to collapse toward the viewer, holds the table-bound objects in space against the seeming weight of gravity. She inserts her viewer directly into the picture, inviting us to a seat and stewardship of the almost-vanquished glass of Amédée Plan de Dieu 2016 perched next to an open catalogue. With this daring insertion of the viewer within the composition, Wine at J’s operates similarly to Velázquez’s Las Meninas or Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait where the viewer becomes a part of the composition—yet while the viewer functions as either the Spanish monarch posing for a portrait or a witness of marital vows in Pecis’s antecedents, here we are ensconced in the domestic comfort of a friend’s living room, party to an intimate conversation. The relationship between viewer and tableau here is as complex as in Velázquez; an open catalogue offers a view of van Gogh’s La Berceuse, granting ample comparison between the Dutch artist’s brilliant floral background, Pecis’s vibrant bouquet of red poppies, and the fictive floral still life hung in the upper right. Wine at J’s is a semiotician’s paradise, each depicted object a referent in a web of interrelated meaning as rich as a Northern Renaissance panel painting. The work’s rich complexity offers limitless scope for interpretation and aesthetic enjoyment, granting the viewer a private escape into her private world.