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NADEGE MOREY
Black and Red 1 Acrylic & Collage on Canvas 30” x 30”
The French artist, Nadege Morey, grew up in Normandy
and moved to the United States at age 25, searching
for new beginnings and blank canvases. Now, living in New
York, she has elaborated a visual vocabulary over the last
three years that achieves a striking dynamism with stark,
minimalist compositions. Her visually captivating canvases
feature two strong acrylic tones and collaged dictionary
pages arranged into geometric forms and patterns. From
the simple standpoint of visual pleasure, there’s a great
deal of enjoyment to be taken from Morey’s patterns, bold
colors and linear forms. Each work invites viewers into a
movement—whether spiraling, zigzagging or circling—
which one can’t help but follow.
In addition to her work’s visual allure, though, Morey marks
interesting departures from, and dialogs with minimalism.
She continues this aesthetic tradition, but adds the
dimension of collage and text. In so doing, she not only
evokes Kazimir Malevich and Sol LeWitt—whose striped,
colorful geometrics she opens with—but also Jasper Johns
and Picasso—for their central incorporation of text. Morey
tests the limits of collage and minimalism by juxtaposing
them. Her black, red and yellow acrylic forms confound
distinctions between movement and stasis, background and
foreground, depth and surface. Meanwhile, the dictionary
pages figure alternately as backdrop, figure, or another
indeterminate form in the dimensional conundrum.
Even more intriguing than these plays with perspective and
depth, Morey’s dictionary pages introduce an entirely new
experience to minimalism. After all, if that artistic tradition is
predicated on the complete absence of identifiable images,
pasting page upon page of definitions into that environment
Black and Red 2 Acrylic & Collage on Canvas 30” x 30”
Nadege in her Studio
constitutes a fairly radical move. Appearing as abstract
forms from a distance, the details of Morey’s collages are full
of completely literal, representational imagery. This sharp
contrast between the large-scale and minute forms in her
works makes them all the more powerful. Taken at different
levels she seems to deal in monochrome abstraction,
minimalist collage and dramatic text art. However one
reads Morey’s work, though, the process is enjoyable and
engaging.
Website: www.nadegemorey.com
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