Nicolas Grenier

Gradation is used as a scalable, mutable device for organizing the paintings into large, concentric forms, as well as the interface through which we experience smaller letterforms and vectors. Thus, color plays a double agent: working to both solidify meaning (produce readability) and obscure signs as they become recognizable. Grenier's intuitive but highly ordered system of depiction amounts to a schema that reveals abstraction as both a system of control through this confounding means, and also a possible respite from the administrative, logistical, and quantitative—reigniting the color field in service to the politics of subjectivity.  

The result is a perverse (and darkly humorous) play on these standardized design mechanisms' desire to “chart” material things systematically. As words begin to function less as graphic elements and content dissolves into the color field, Grenier's modular jewels become sites for contemplation. Neither illustrations of ideas, theories or opinions, these works invite us to reconsider the issues and concepts outside of their usual framework, offering a complex visual experience that slows down our reading of the works and brings us to a psychological “meditative” state that helps to facilitate a form of critical engagement—less strictly cerebral and more intuitive—a place of contemplation where the political dissolves into the philosophical.