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The Mystery in the Darkness at Baker-Hall

Melissa Wallen, Everything at Once (Thunder Hole), 2024, oil on linen, 18 x 24 inches (Photo courtesy of Zachary Balber)
Melissa Wallen recently opened a solo exhibition in Baker-Hall, located at Dimensions Variable in Miami’s Little River.
The gallery was founded by Amanda Baker-Hall in 2024. Its program includes emerging as well as mid-career artists with a focus on narrative and non-objective paintings and sculpture. Dimensions Variable is a player on the Miami art stage, founded by Frances Trombly and Cuban born Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova in 2009. It has counted the Knight Foundation, the National Endowment of the Arts, and the Andy Warhol Foundation, as well as many organizations in Miami, as supporters.

Melissa Wallen, First Contact, 2024, oil on linen, 60 x 72 inches (Photo courtesy of Zachary Balber)
Originally from New Jersey, Wallen moved to Miami in 2006. She studied at Florida International University and contributed to the opening of the de la Cruz Collection. She was its director until its recent closure.
Wallen works through the lens of dreams and emotion, ever shifting. Her paintings are beautiful and serious. Irony and current events have no place here.

Melissa Wallen, Where Time Goes, 2024, oil on linen, 60 x 72 inches, (Photo courtesy of Zachary Balber)
The modestly sized paintings stand out in their facile handling of paint and the intense quality of color, using raw pigments she gathered during her travels to France and Italy. She took a pilgrimage to the south of France to specifically experience the markedly different colors of the landscape, a place that has held a pivotal role for many artists.
She then went to source the pigments that align to the landscape, discovering a trove of unavailable products at the usual art stores. From these powders she added oil, making her own paint, creating colors that don’t come “in the tube.”
While many of the paintings are dark, there is a sensuality of paint which holds back the descent into the morose. The deep reds, blues, and green flicker as if lit by a candle, as seen in “Procession”, “Out of the Blue”, “Where time Goes”, and “First Contact”. The artist also paints well in monochrome and color washes as in her painting, “Imperial Cloud”.

Melissa Wallen, Imperial Cloud, 2024, oil on linen, 24 x 18 inches (Photo courtesyof Zachary Balber)
Wallen’s brush strokes are subtle yet effectual, using the “wet-on-wet” manner of painting, stroke atop stroke to build the surface. Ethereal and evocative, she leaves plenty of room for the imagination of the viewer to interpret, as is her intention.

Melissa Wallen, Mourning Star Jasmine, 2024, oil on linen, 60 x 48 inches (Photo courtesy of Zachary Balber)
The artist’s work stands in contrast to the ubiquitous trend of “Bad Painting.” The charm of this style arose after centuries of moving toward virtuosity. It gained prominence, in part, after painting was cavalierly declared dead, realism already moot after the rise of the camera. Theory heavy postmodernism dominated the art world before the reactionary rush to plumb one’s history for content, laying one’s scars bare.
In a world rife with difficulty, it is certainly pleasurable to sink into these works, demons left behind. The timelessness of beauty was lost in the early 20th century with the industrial revolution, people spent hours, days, and years on a mind-numbing assembly line. Think of late Monet as compared to the Ashcan School. What did the light falling across an unmade bed matter, as in Wallen’s painting “Morning Star Jasmine”? This painting is a standout in the exhibition in terms of color and space. The bed floats ambiguously, unmoored to the edges of the canvas, dreamlike. This work, while low in tonal juxtaposition, vibrates through precise and subtle use of simultaneous contrast, a lá Bonnard.

Melissa Wallen, Procession, 2024, oil on linen, 32 x 40 inches, (Photo courtesy at Zachary Balber)
While art history informs these paintings, they become contemporaneous in their move toward gestural abstraction and Neo-expressionism. Her blacks are rich and, like Manet, don’t fall flat, as is often the case. She uses a variety of color strategies including those of Expressionism and Impressionism. In the painting “Everything at Once” she approaches Fauvist color.
The brush strokes of the larger dark paintings feel hurried. Ultimately, the inclusion of a small detail, such as a sharper brushstroke or flowers, saves them. She seems to excel when the works are smaller and can receive more layering.

Melissa Wallen, Out of the Blue, 2024, oil on linen, 9 x 12 inches (Photo courtesy Zachary Balber)
Melissa Wallen is one of those artists who inspire curiosity about their future developments.
The exhibition will be on view through November 9, 2024.
WHAT: “Between Sleep and Sky,” by Melissa Wallen
WHERE: Baker-Hall, 101 NW 79th Street, Miami
WHEN: Noon to 5 p.m., Tuesday and Saturday, through Saturday, Nov. 9.
COST: Free
INFORMATION: 914-787-9270 or bakerhall.art
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