Kristen Van Deventer

 

How I understand it visually, is that mauve is brown becoming pink or a spurious purple tempting a warm grey. What is discarded on the palette always becomes mauve. A muddy mix of leftovers that quivers between shades. Los Angeles is this color. The heat, the sun, the dirt – either fades or blinds. It is covered over by the dust, the tinted lenses, leveling the landscape. I didn’t know that mauve was once a bright poisonous purple that easily faded, so now we know it, as dusty, boring, always a little in and out of fashion.

 

 

Kristen Van Deventer (b. 1976) is an artist living in Los Angeles. Van Deventer studied at the University of Southern California and the Maryland Institute of Art. Her paintings are currently on view in Other Ways and Means at Marc Foxx Gallery, Los Angeles, and have recently been exhibited in Quiet Tremors at Kate Werble Gallery, New York and Sallie Gardner at Michael Thibault Gallery, Los Angeles. She has had solo exhibitions at David Petersen Gallery, Minneapolis and Michael Jon Gallery, Miami.

 

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