Orange to Rattle, a solo exhibition by Magalie Guérin, will be on view at the Esker Foundation from January 23 through April 26, 2026.
Magalie Guérin’s paintings often begin with what remains: she carries forward yesterday’s pigment, a trace of past works and decisions, as a provocation to begin a new composition. From this material residue she builds paintings that are both generative and iterative. Her works remember and reference themselves even as they continually evolve, build, and refuse to settle.
Guérin explores how color and shape behave as subjects in their own right, entering the pictorial space like characters with distinct temperaments, personalities, and roles: a vibrant chartreuse pierces its crooked hook near center; a golden yellow hums at the sharp edge of an undulating beige plane; a mottled brown or pool of dark teal brace at the edges of the canvas; an intense orange announces itself like a flare.
In concert with these colors, textures rise into low relief, sweeping in from edges, dappling and complicating the surface while contours and geometric intervals anchor or disrupt composition. Shapes overlay, press, or emerge, and through the vibrating congregation of all these elements, figure and ground negotiate with one another.
Although often grouped under abstraction, Guérin resists the term. Her concern is not to deny the world, but to construct compositions that feel undeniably of it. The way color enters a work is directly linked to Guérin’s relationship to place, objects, and time—perhaps through the surprisingly lush pallet of the desert around Marfa, Texas, or a pair of favorite shoes, and, of course, through the previous day’s painting. In this way, elements from the world are always present, yet remain elusive.
