Yto Barrada

Pace Gallery is pleased to inaugurate its second summer season in East Hampton with a solo exhibition of new and recent work by Moroccan-French artist Yto Barrada, who is known for a body of work built over the past two decades which mines historical figures, sites and situations for artistic material. This exhibition brings together over 25 works by Barrada: recent pieces created with a reappropriation of Frank Stella’s “Moroccan paintings”; a selection of collages using naturally-dyed velvets, part of Barrada’s ongoing deep dive into natural dyes; a series of photograms of candy wrappers which explore the idea of the void; a selection of paper collages that respond to the aftermath of the catastrophic 1960 earthquake in the Moroccan city of Agadir; and furniture sculptures that revisit the 18th century facing-bodies “conversation chair” using traditional Moroccan wicker weaving techniques.

The artist’s series of new large-scale works continues her exploration into natural dyeing history and techniques, and irreverently alludes to Frank Stella’s 1964–65 Moroccan painting series titled after cities in the country. Barrada’s series adds cities from his honeymoon travels that he did not feature. Barrada’s works present luminous tones in alternating diagonal bands of color that starkly contrast with Stella’s industrial alkyd fluorescent paintings. Alongside Stella, this series references the history of African abstraction. Following Morocco’s independence in 1956, a group of painters including Mohamed Chebaa, Farid Belkahia, and Mohamed Melehi, known as the Casablanca School, pioneered a North African modernism with integrated materials and motifs from folk art and pop culture.