Coline Marotta I Places in Between

Places in Between 

Coline Marotta's work exists on and between many planes. Planes as in two-dimensional spaces on flat surfaces, but also planes as in different realities. For instance, in the piece Everyday Unrealizing, the canvas is divided into several sections. An irregular grid, like a type case used for displaying knick knacks. Or a comic book with various panels bringing forth the narrative. Or a film, always with a frame or two dedicated to another place - a scenery or abstract state of mind. 

There is an outside and an inside, formally and mentally. Some views are up close, some far away. Foreground, middle ground and background. It is kind of classic, but also, it is not. 

The sections in the painting become planes, and the planes stage scenes of temporalities, like a jittery little loop in front of our eyes. A couple in a bed are both deep in each their own headspaces, one sleeping, one awake with a book. Together but apart.

Marotta is not presenting something godly or majestic, rather she delves into the identity and emotional levels of everyday life. Little pinpoints in time where we find ourselves existing. Every moment approached is a transitional state. Any human with an inner world would probably relate.

In life - and in painting - there is room for doubt and conflicting emotions. But somehow it almost always comes together eventually.

Technically it all starts out with a rough composition. Often sketched out in black and white or monochrome on paper, then transferred onto the canvas, where the composition is further elaborated on with colour. Multiple layers of paint give body, but somehow not making the painting murky or textured. Rapid brush strokes give witness to Marotta's body, presence and scale. Though the build-up is hectic and vibrating, the motives feel calm. For Marotta, painting is a dynamic moment, just like in real life; sometimes at the beginning, sometimes at the end, but for the majority of time, somewhere in between. The outcome looks floaty.. easy.. The process is not.

As Marotta herself says, most of her earlier works have been a little more removed from her own person yet always emoted and shaped through her personal lens. This time she brings it in a bit closer, in a few instances even putting herself and her lived life directly in the paintings.

Marotta is known for her distinct style of characters, but something else that is also frequently recurring in her works is what surrounds them - homes and sceneries, functioning as extensions of the people inhabiting them. Even without a person there, the landscapes possibly end up being more of a portrait than any of the paintings with humans in them.

The piece Les Restanques (Sunday Painter Painting) depicts swirly fields and trees, referencing familiar places from Marotta's childhood in Southern France. Here her grandfather, and later on her father, would take care of the olive groves and the stone walls surrounding them. Both Marotta and her sisters ended up moving away. It is an origin story, but it is also an absence. Marotta might not be there physically, but something inside her still belongs. Through the act of painting the landscape, a different connection happens - an emotional investment, as a female painter and as a daughter. In a sense the act of remote painting becomes a connector, a mental telephone. It creates a place in between.

Written by Martha Hviid