SANTA FE- Mokha Laget: Perceptualism, organized by the Katzen Arts Center at American University, is dedicated to the past 10 years of Laget’s extensive practice. The study of more than 40 works includes paintings, drawings, lithographs, bronze sculptures and, surprisingly, elegant kites, set above the head, which offer an airy counterpoint to the earthy and earthenware fixed to the walls of the gallery. Laget, who is originally from North Africa and lives and works in Santa Fe, studied at Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington D.C., where she aligned with members of the Washington Color School, eventually becoming the assistant to painter Gene Davis.
Like Davis and his WCS contemporaries (Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Thomas Downing, Howard Mehring and Paul Reed), Laget excels in creating an exhilarating unity of paint and substrate, especially in his geometrically-shaped paintings, for which she is best known. The absorption of color into the surface is optically compelling, even if the compositions themselves defy conventional spatial logic. Although reminiscent of architecture and, in some cases, intricate origami folds, the arrangements of shapes don’t necessarily make sense. Possible points of reference, such as imaginary light sources, doors, earth and sky, lead viewers down a rabbit hole of upside-down spatial relationships. This effect is compounded by Laget’s deeply satisfying sense of color, which subtly conveys the light and atmosphere of northern New Mexico. The epic “Watershed #2 (Remains of the Day)”, composed of four shaped canvases, is a chockablock rhapsody of inclined planes. Blue trapezoids emphatically punctuate a rhythmic expanse of savvy golden yellows and saturated reds. Although vaguely resembling a row of buildings, viewers can almost imagine Laget placing these shapes in a gigantic vise, gradually tightening until the shapes compress in a collision of energetic forces.
Perceptualism encompasses a wide range of interconnected approaches, with varying emphasis on the line, as in the series Visual Scores, and form, as in shaped paintings. In the intimate Caprice series, Laget uses acrylic gouache on primed linen to suggest exploded patterns of pieces that don’t fit together, as if the shapes were derived from a pleasantly illogical Jenga puzzle. But the shaped paintings reign supreme in this strong exhibition. Key pieces – including ‘Windjammer’, with its gentle nod to the late compositions of the great Al Held, and ‘Double Pylon’, with its fluid yet monolithic sense of gravity – testify to the paradoxical fusion of form and the illusion of the artist.
Mokha Laget: Perceptualism continues at Container (1226 Flagman Way, Santa Fe, New Mexico) through May 15. The exhibition was organized by the Katzen Arts Center at American University and curated by Kristen Hileman.
