Vivien Kabar

Suzie Wal­she

Vivien Kabar’s work high­lights ele­men­tal images, using dra­matic ploys such as con­trasts in scale, shifts in focus, mir­rored reflec­tions, stac­cato images and mul­ti­ple or lay­ered sur­faces. Sen­sory per­cep­tion for Kabar is a spir­i­tual activ­ity, one that leads to a height­ened aware­ness of both nature and culture—this thought process points to a new kind of realism—one that is engaged with the actual processes of life. A diverse and curi­ous artist Kabar’s recent work Fran­cois, or the Schiz­o­phre­nia of a Pompous Waiter high­lights her inter­est in self-representation and por­trai­ture. Lay­ers of paint are com­posed accord­ing to a work­ing method the artist sees as being sim­i­lar to the process of draw­ing in that you are look­ing at some­thing and re-presenting it in as direct a way as you can. The del­i­cately incised marks of detail in this work, drawn over washes of color evoke clouds of ambi­gu­ity. In each of Kabar’s work­ing meth­ods there is a bal­ance between action and con­tem­pla­tion. Col­ors are also paired with their oppo­sites: red com­ple­mented by green and blue with orange. Through such color con­trasts Kabar’s is able to sug­gest a spe­cial nar­ra­tive using color to define rather than merely com­plete the form. For her abstrac­tion in nature is not amor­phous or form­less. The images are just frag­ments extracted from their fig­u­ra­tive con­text. Kabar uses line, not so much as a means of rep­re­sen­ta­tion, but in a more abstract way, to express feel­ings and moods; retain­ing the notion that the artist role is to sug­gest, not define.

Each of Kabar’s paint­ings has a vis­ceral punch that obvi­ates decon­struc­tive analy­sis, employ­ing uni­ver­sally under­stood images to cre­ate com­plex per­cep­tual expe­ri­ences. The image and con­cept are dra­mat­i­cally jux­ta­posed and poet­i­cally struc­tured in an attempt to heighten sen­sory expe­ri­ence, and in some cases to call it into ques­tion. Kabar is con­cerned with mak­ing the spec­ta­tor aware of the con­nec­tions between body and mind, con­tem­pla­tion and action, inner and outer real­ity deal­ing with themes of per­cep­tion, mem­ory, and self-knowledge. The first thing that strikes one about Kabar’s paint­ings is the rich­ness of their color, and the sec­ond thing one notices is the pecu­liarly archaic char­ac­ter of her dynamic fig­ures. In The Sor­row of the Muse Kabar uses the clas­sic por­trait as a vehi­cle to explore form, color and shape. These ele­ments are explic­itly the sub­ject of the paint­ing and given equal empha­sis. The dynamic rela­tion­ship between the forms is empha­sized by the inten­sive out­lines and flat unmixed color forms. Recently her palette has become increas­ingly vibrant. Bright pas­sages of color are vig­or­ously applied in seem­ingly spon­ta­neous brush­strokes. How­ever in actu­al­ity Kabar plans her com­po­si­tions very delib­er­ately accord­ing to for­mal prin­ci­ples, the work cre­ates a type of visual sound through patches of lines and color—the work is made to lis­ten to.

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