Broken Molds: Artist, Jean Marie Haessle
From Series Gnossienne, 2016, Oil on Canvas
French born artist, Jean-Marie Haessle, working in New York City since 1967, quickly became a distinctive voice amid the cerebral formalism of the American Modernists. His gallery in NYC, Mizuma Kips & Wada Art, states: “Haessle’s appreciation for Color Field composition found affective scaffolding in his full-bodied, lyrical approach to paint, melding romanticism with an expository rigor as yet untapped by his contemporaries.” Haessle has explored the communicative possibilities of gesture in many iterations over the course of his career, from his 1970s geometric abstractions creating serigraphs to the lush acrylic amalgams we encounter in his more recent paintings.
He cites Van Gogh and the Impressionists as having the greatest influence on this work, for “their ability to depict the visual impression of a moment, especially in terms of the shifting effects of light and color.” In turns meditative and defiant, Haessle’s iconic paintings are love letters to the medium itself, balancing the mythology of fine art with its spell-binding ability to box with the sublime. Throughout the evolution of his practice, his investment in constructing edgeless, emotional pastorals through mark-making has remained steadfast; his instinctive interventions, whether patterned or free-form, achieve harmony in agglomeration, creating thresholds through chromatically anchored deployments of frenzy. His works have been showcased around the world, including throughout Europe, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea where he is highly celebrated.
– Christina Spearman