Maureen Paley

“...Maureen Gallace frequently paints houses – the buildings and landscapes, destinations nearby and routes to and from her hometown of Monroe, Connecticut; views and memories of views, abstract and yet faithful to the proto-crypto-structures that give meaning to the phrase “where I come from.”

Gallace uses her own photographs as source material, winnowing particular vantages of her local knowledge, but these are little more than place-holders, as it should be obvious from looking that the artist abjures making work “about” photography or the photographic. Her pictures take up a lineage, from Cézanne and Gwen John to Morandi and Ryman, of what could be called homemade, rather than machine-made, modernity: As much as they are “about” painting, they approach a site, allegorical and not, a concept as well as an actuality, called “home” – the place where sexuality and being are formed, where anyone first begins to think about who he or she is and desires, the question of leaving home, and the possibility of homelessness, in the offing...”


excerpt from: Best of 2006: Maureen Gallace, Bruce Hainley,
Artforum, December 2006.