Naudline Pierre: This Is Not All There Is

Naudline Pierre harnesses the power of spiritual iconography and transcendental motifs in her layered wash drawings and richly-hued paintings to create fictional worlds rooted in a mythology of her own making. In her exhibition This Is Not All There Is, Pierre continues her exploration of imagined worlds, incorporating drawings large and small alongside and within sculptural elements to create an immersive environment. Organized by Chief Curator Claire Gilman, This is Not All There Is is the artist’s first exhibition to exclusively focus on her works on paper

Aware of the possibility as well as the restriction inherent in narratives of spiritual transcendence, Pierre mobilizes time-honored motifs such as the altar piece and ecclesiastical architecture, creating fantastical scenes of winged creatures and fiery beings. Like color and texture and composition, Pierre deploys religious iconography as a tool for building liminal, multidimensional spaces within her drawings. Although Pierre’s primary medium is painting, she views drawing as an integral part of her larger practice because of the way in which it solicits a back-and-forth relationship between artist and object. Pierre has described how, in contending with the paper surface and the myriad technical possibilities implicit in drawing, the artist gives up a certain degree of control. She likens paper to a living organism that both absorbs and repels, revealing, in the process, the physical work involved in an image taking root on a drawing’s surface.