Exhibition: Julia Rommel, Uncle

Julia Rommel Uncle January 29 - March 5 2022

In a gallery space, a horizontal muted green painting hangs in the center of a wall.

Bureau is pleased to announce Uncle, Julia Rommel’s fifth solo exhibition with the gallery.  There is a structural, pragmatic quality to Rommel’s paintings. We see how they are built, layered, rubbed, smoothed, folded, unfolded and stapled together. The traces of manipulation are not hidden, rather they are laid bare with frayed edges and revealed wooden stretcher bars. The new paintings for Uncle are no longer the expression of fitful, repetitive re-workings. They are spry attempts at balance and harmony just this side of chaos. 

Rommel begins, like many painters, by coating linen with repeating layers of gesso, a chalky primer. She plans out these expanses of thick, white underpainting – and those areas without – to create an architectural pattern upon which a painting of varying thickness and texture will result. These paintings show recent experiments with opacity and brush work, some exhibiting a thinner wash with a new focus on translucence. Hazy monochromes of green and crimson are punctuated by scratchy and icing-thick fields of color. Crisp, vertical stripes of white, red, pink and blue bisect the compositions and triangular creases appear throughout - a trace of the paintings’ process. At times, the linen barely reaches the perimeter of the composition to roll over the stretcher with staples methodically holding a thin edge in place. In other works, staples are deployed like sutures to join two sheets of thickly laid pigment: a wound creating a shallow, jagged valley across the picture.

The installation, deliberate and precise, is the result of a desire to engage with Bureau’s gallery space in a new way. The exhibition features many smaller and medium sized paintings allowing the works to engage one another in shifting scale and clarity. The small paintings in gemlike purples and greens re-introduce the intimate scale of Rommel’s earliest work bringing into focus her original technique of stretching and re-stretching. Many of the smaller paintings could be called siblings with their larger neighbors; cut from the same cloth and sliced apart by the artist in a decisive move. 

The exhibition is the result of a year’s worth of trials and innovations, as any active studio practice is: the artist attempts at moving beyond the repetition and duplication of her own developed systems and techniques. Rommel has often talked about creating the element of chance, but then knowing her technique so well, she has to change it to surprise herself. With this show that challenge becomes ever more complex. She revels in the abundant possibilities for how to prepare linen to receive color and how to build form. Rommel shows that there are always new ways to start and finish paintings. Julia Rommel (b. 1980 in Salisbury MD, lives and works in New York) received an MFA from American University in Washington D.C. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include: Long Leash, Overduin & Co., Los Angeles, 2020; Fall Guy, Standard (Oslo), Oslo, 2019; Candy Jail, Bureau, New York, 2019; Twin Bed, Bureau at Tanya Leighton, Berlin, 2018; Stay-at-Home Dad with Mathew Cerletty, Standard (Oslo), Oslo, 2017; Two Italians, Six Lifeguards, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, 2015. Rommel's work is currently on view in Christen Sveaas Art Foundation: The Travel Bureau, selected by Paulina Olowska, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2022. Her work is in the collections of the Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; KADIST, Paris and San Francisco; Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker, Norway; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. 

The gallery is open Wednesday - Saturday 11 - 6 p.m. For more information please write to office@bureau-inc.com

In a gallery space, a vertical painting consisting of a top blue portion and a bottom red portion hung on the left wall. On the right wall is a horizontal monochromatic green painting.
Close-up of a green monochromatic painting with four vertical ridges.

New Grip, 2022, Oil on linen, 26 × 52 in.

A close-up angle of a crease in a monochromatic green painting.
A thin vertical painting. The top half of the painting is blue and the bottom is a brushy violet.

Roller, 2021, Oil on linen, 48 ½ × 24 in.

A thin vertical painting. The top half of the painting is blue and the bottom is a brushy violet. The painting is hung in a long hallway with the other paintings hung on the same wall in the distance.
Along a gallery wall, a small purple painting installed next to a larger monochromatic white painting next to a green painting. On the back wall is a larger abstract painting consisting of blue, white, red, and brown areas.
A large abstract painting consisting of blue, white, red, and brown areas. To it's right is a small blue and white painting, a larger vertical monochromatic red painting, and to the right a brushy purple and green painting.
A large abstract painting. The painting consists of differently shaped areas of solid colors ranging from blue, red, white to brown.

Life Boat, 2021, Oil on linen on wood, 69 ¾ × 83 in.

A side view of a large abstract painting. The painting consists of differently shaped areas of solid colors ranging from blue, red, white to brown.
Along a long horizontal wall. A square white and blue painting, a large monochromatic red painting, and to the right a small, brushy green and purple painting.
A square abstract painting. The top half is painted a thick white and the bottom half is a thin brushy blue.

Forgiveness, 2021, Oil on linen, 25 ¼ × 25 ½ in.

A large vertical painting. The painting is a red monochrome. The surface is brushy.

Red Nude, 2021, Oil on linen, 61 × 44 ½ in.

A side view of a large vertical painting. The painting is a red monochrome. The surface is brushy.
A small abstract painting. The surface is rough and brushy consisting of green and purple paint.

Go Fish, 2021, Oil on linen, 14 ½ × 12 ¾ in.

In a gallery space, a monochromatic red painting with a brushy surface. To its right is a small brushy green and purple painting. On the right wall a large blue monochromatic painting
A large blue monochromatic painting with a green accent at the top.

15th Floor, 2022, Oil on linen, 48 ½ × 42 in.

A sideview of a large blue monochromatic painting with a green accent at the top.
Four abstract paintings in a gallery space. To the left a small blue and white square painting. To its right is a larger red monochrome painting with a brushy surface. On the right wall is a large blue monochrome painting. In the center of the larger works is a small brushy green and purple painting.
In a gallery space, a small brushy green and purple painting is hung on the left wall. On the center all is a large blue monochrome painting. To the right is a white monochrome painting with a red band of color on the right side and bottom.
Along a gallery wall. A thin purple painting hangs to the left. In the middle is a larger white monochrome painting with a red band of color on the right and bottom sides. To the right a horizontal green painting with a brushy surface.
A thin, purple monochrome painting with a brushy area at the top with green and red accents.

Purp, 2021, Oil on linen, 25 ¼ × 13 ¾ in.

A large white monochrome painting. Along the ride side are bars of pale yellow, red and pink, continuing onto the bottom edge of the painting.

China Chalet, 2021, Oil on linen, 48 × 38 in.

A detail of a white abstract painting. Along the side of the painting is a series of staples. At the bottom edge of the painting is a red bar of color which overlaps onto the side.
A horizontal abstract painting with a brushy green surface. On the left and right edges are yellow bands of color.

Left Field, 2021, Oil on linen, 37 ½ × 66 ¼ in.

A side view of a horizontal abstract painting with a brushy green surface. On the left and right edges are yellow and red bands of color.
In a large gallery space, three abstract paintings in a line. On the left is a white monochrome painting with a red band of color along the right and bottom edges. In the center a horizontal green painting with a brushy surface. To the right a larger abstract painting with shapes painted in blue, white, red.