The Mallarmé Suite

The work A Throw of the Dice by French Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé is a reference that is elliptically evoked in Kim Pieters’ new paintings. The disjunction of language and image produce an enduring tension within her work, offering multiple points of encounter. This series of intense colour field paintings cut across Mallarmé’s philosophical and syntactic discussion of chance and necessity into a supplementary ‘open’. In this clearing the viewer is invited to occupy some presence of their own-being-human. This framing of event is a continuing project for Pieters and revolves around a question she constantly summons into her practice: 'what is a life?'

Kim Pieters (1959) lives and works in Dunedin, creating alongside her paintings: photographs, improvisational film and music. Selected painting exhibitions include: experimentum linguae (2009), Wall Works, Adam Gallery, Victoria University of Wellington (2009), something possible or i will suffocate (2009), abrahams journey, Bowen Galleries, Wellington (2012), is the colour the thing or is the thing the colour? (2012) with Kirsten Ferguson, Inge Doesburg Gallery, Dunedin, and Hop Scotch (2012) with Anoushka Akel, Artspace, Auckland.