Alfonso Artiaco gallery is pleased to announce Melissa Kretschmer’s exhibition opening on Friday, December, 16, 2011 at 7.30 pm. The artist will be present.

“These latest works are a continuation of “Plane Series” with a slight variation…the introduction of a new material, the Dura-Lar film. I came upon the material purely by chance because I bought what I thought was a package of translucent paper only to discover that it was in fact plastic sheeting, a preferred acetate alternative used by graphic designers. What else to do but try to employ it in the work in some manner?

Plastic typically does not accept a water-based medium like gouache…unless, as I discovered, one alternately paints the surface and rubs it down with a paper towel and repeats the process until the fluid matter begins to adhere to it, as if to paper. So I was able to prepare larger brushy, gray, translucent sheets that I could cut up and use as another collage material in the works.

As thin as the material is, the material still has a more physical presence than a mere coat of gouache directly on the surface of the work. And because the actual painted surface is on the underside of the adhered thickness it has a different feel than if it were floating on top. It becomes buried within, even if within the shallowest of depths.

A new element, another note, a varied chord, a subtle shift in a series I have been working in for some time now…it feels like a new, an other, even if still familiar, set of sequences…hence the titles’ references to music. The terms are not specific to each work but dispensed according to the feeling of a moment.“ (Melissa Kretschmer, 7 December, 2011)