Apr 2

Janine Saul

Janine Saul is a printmaker who has exhibited internationally in major cities such as London, Athens, Tuscany, and New York. She participated in an exhibition and residency in Japan and has set up silkscreen print installations of her work in Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Turkey, Mexico, Spain, Italy, and Japan. Notable solo exhibitions include shows at the Villa Lena Rain Room and Hackney Bridge. The main concepts within Janine’s work are movement and relationships of space.

The prints come off as painterly, often including swirls and scratches on the surface. A key factor in Janine’s art entails the strategic use of negative space. Works like Spirit Tuition (top of article) and The Heron & The Boy pt I (pictured above) are typical of her works as they display both curves and angles. If the pieces were just angles, they would convey a feeling of aggression, such as blades. If the art contained only curves, they would communicate a sense of comfort and intimacy, such as the sun or fleshy fat. The combination of both angles and curves along with the negative space interprets a sense of complex reactions towards our surroundings.

She Transient Dance (pictured above and below) brings Janine’s work full circle into fruition of an interpretation of space installed in an outdoor setting. These pieces were created and displayed in the Apuan Alps in Tuscany, Northern Italy. The prints dance on the surface and in the wind, sprung up like standards. Colors are either pastel or muted to the point of almost being so. These prints almost come off as figurative, the top curves almost appearing as heads, the angles resembling backs, and the drooping of shapes conveying necks. As if a person would curl up within their space. Although the prints may also come into view as pure shapes composed around negative space.

The poetry and majesty of Janine's art almost reflect a bridge between civilizations. There remains a sense of Eastern spirit within the works, reflecting movement and flatness at the same time such as in medieval Japanese prints. However, containing a Western contemporary aesthetic with formations of abstractions in the tradition of Miro, Klee, Picasso, and Calder. These animated works may invoke emotions such as intimidation, tenderness, confidence, and solace. The way the angles confront corners of the negative space and spheres may appear intimidating, along with the stretching out of forms in an almost linear fashion. The spheres may reflect solace and tenderness while the projection of the variety of forms in one unified fashion could project confidence.

An elegant dance of space and time, these energized lines filled with scratchy and swirly solid shades of muted color invade our personal boundaries. Janine Saul incorporates the art of printmaking into various forms of installation and video art along with beautiful displays on their own standing. Restoring a sense of hope, the prints reinterpret abstraction beyond a means of decorative qualities and into a realm of conceptual relevance regarding our relationships and engagements with the space around us. Without using physical references and relying on her imagination, she creates whimsical art which can be cherished as eternal in nature, historically respectful, yet innovative through an approach in regards to design elements. Janine reinterprets the meaning of contemporary abstraction, confining the art away from modernism and towards development and innovation.