Tonight at Cheim & Read in Chelsea, the artist Ghada Amer launched her eponymous retrospective monograph in the center of her solo show which remains on at the gallery until July 19. Amer worked on the book for five years and was involved in every aspect of its design. It shows of her paintings, her performances, her garden sculptures and her collaboration with Reza Farkhondeh. "Read Maura's text," the artist told her audience of artists, gallery owners and writers. "It was a revelation [to me]. It's long, but it's interesting."
The evening began with a moment of recognition for Louise Bourgeois, who was also represented by Cheim & Read, who passed away on Memorial Day in New York at age 98.
But the mood didn't remain somber for long as Amer, who has a ready, contagious laugh, answered Reilly's questions about how she became an artist (she hails from Cairo and grew up in France), how she was blocked from learning to paint at art school, how she draws on the events in her own life for inspiration, not "big ideas," and how she came to re-reinvent the embroidery used feminist artists of the 1970s in her first works, created 20 years later. "I wanted to create a language that cross the divide from craft to art. Whether I have succeeded is not for me to say," said Amer, adding that she likes to play with dualities like low art and high art, men and women, periphery and center.
Amer and Reilly were seated in front of one of the artist's newest paintings, a dark canvas with a vortex of pastel threads. Amer explained how she turns her canvas upside down, has her assistants hold it up for her, lies on the floor beneath it to unravel the threads and then rolls out from under it and has her assistants drop it to the floor. The result is the most painterly she has been able to achieve with thread. "It has taken me twenty years, but for this show I feel that I have mastered my technique and I can finally call myself a painter," she said.
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