Renée Estée: Choral Ode
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COMA is pleased to present a solo exhibition, titled ‘Choral Ode‘, by New York-based artist Renée Estée (b. 1993), on view 14 July – 19 August in the Darlinghurst Gallery. This is the artist’s first solo presentation with COMA.
Utilising painting as a gateway to otherworldly realms, Renée Estée negotiates spaces of correspondence and transition, liminal thresholds between life and death. Drawing parallels to Greek Mythology, where protagonists undertake perilous journeys to bring back loved ones, these paintings contemplate the possibility of traversing the afterlife and returning with people, stories, and messages. Each artwork contributes to a larger chorus, echoing the strophe, antistrophe, and epode of a Grecian choral ode—an ode sung by the chorus, transitioning from one side of the stage to the other.
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Renée Estéei
Carry Home (I saw houses in the river, I saw fields on fire, I saw the end once more), 2023
oil paint, oil bar, fabric pearl appliqué, gold leaf, lace trim, found fabric, charcoal, found object, collaged canvas on canvas
182.5 x 222 cm / 71 7/8 x 87 3/8 inchesAt the heart of this body of work is an elegiac aura—love letters, poems, and farewells. The inclusion of numbers, birth dates, and hours, momentarily ground us in the reality of linear existence, emphasising passages and markers of time that direct and indicate the way that we mourn and remember. Physically the maze-like structure of the presentation intends to disorient and collapses sequential readings of these numbers and figures, suggesting that time is in fact a construct, and life, death and existence fall into each other. -
Choral Ode contemplates the notion of souls dwelling beneath the earth, while also considering the presence of angels, ghosts, and spirits residing above us. The repeated imagery of small tombstones across the canvas symbolises the portals, archways, entryways, windows, and doorways that Estée employs to connect us to these omnipresent sentients and lead us to other spaces, both physical and metaphorical. Some paintings evoke a sense of being below ground, while others suggest rising up, floating, or flying above. This feeling is mirrored by the undulating formation of the paintings in the space, as they rise and fall at different levels, so that we are below, above and within the works all at once.
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Artworks
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Installation Views
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