 Pentti Monkkonen Cartouches Cartouches are essentially elaborate frames. Traditionally, picture frames have functioned as a barricade between the real architectural space of the wall and the metaphysical world of art. In many baroque ceiling-frescoes, the edge between the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional becomes blurred. Painted figures appear to come over the edge into the architectural space and architectural elements are rendered within the two dimensional space, achieving an illusion between reality and image. The elaborate picture frames of the Baroque reinforce this kind of fetishization of the edge, turning it into a place between reality and fantasy. This ornamental fetish for the edge, did not end with the disappearance of the frame in late modern work, but actually increased to the point where some artists such as Frank Stella and Ellsworth Kelly, used the edge of the canvas as the focal point of their paintings. Monkkonen employs this interaction between painting and the sculpted aspects of the cartouches. For instance, in "Dead End" the sculpted skull protruding from the frame is the same color of the painted brick wall (painting field). Here the frame becomes an extension of the painting. In other works, all emphasis is placed on the frame making the flat painting field almost secondary. Monkkonen's cartouches focus on an in-between-ness to achieve a balance between sculpture and painting, color and shape, abstraction and representation. Pentti Monkkonen was born in 1975 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Exhibition: May 7 - June 4, 2005 Gallery hours: Tue-Sat 11am - 6pm Daniel Hug Gallery 510 Bernard St. USA-Los Angeles, CA 90012 Telephone +1 323 221 0016 Fax +1 323 343 1133 Email gallery@danielhug.com www.danielhug.com |
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