Harmonic Tremor

Press Release

Nicelle Beauchene Gallery is pleased to announce Harmonic Tremor, an exhibition of new drawings by Louise Despont. This will be Despont’s fourth exhibition at the gallery.

The works in this exhibition take their inspiration from the simple, Balinese daily profusion of offerings, known as Canang Sari and the religious and cultural significance of volcanoes in Indonesian life. Taking its name from the term used to describe the acoustic signals that preclude volcanic eruptions, Harmonic Tremor charts and examines the spiritual and energetic spaces latent within Balinese traditions and practices.

The topographical depictions of volcanoes in The Sound Heard Around the World and Anak Krakatau (or Child of Krakatau) merge and codify Despont’s compositional rigor with her long-standing interest in the resonance and reverberation of sound waves. Considering the explosion of Krakatoa in 1883, and the vibration of which circled the globe four times, Despont expresses these energies and transmissions in her drawings, recasting them as not only narrative and pictorial constructions, but as aural and audible translations.

Individually and as a body of work, Despont’s drawings denote a balance between sacred and profane, good and evil, chaos and order, creation and destruction. In Balinese Hinduism daily offerings are made in gratitude and for appeasement, as an attempt to maintain an order of balance, access the sublime, and to symbolically give over one’s mind to the will of the Gods. Despont considers the sacred nature of these rituals to be synonymous with her own practice, connecting and reinforcing the physical and spiritual planes while transforming energy and space through one’s intention and focus.

Louise Despont received her BA in Art Semiotics at Brown University in 2006. Her work has been presented internationally in public and private venues including Pioneer Works, Brooklyn; VI,VII, Oslo; Petit Palais, Paris; The Museum of Arts and Design; New York; Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York; The High Museum of Art, Atlanta; IMO Projects, Copenhagen; Galerie Isa, Mumbai; Foxy Production; New York; and Ibid Projects, London, among numerous others. Despont’s work is featured in Vitamin D2: New Perspectives in Drawing (Phaidon Press) and Louise Despont (Nicelle Beauchene Gallery /Ibid Projects). The artist is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, a Weston Price Film Award from Brown University, Princess Grace Grant recipient and Macdowell fellow. She lives and works between Bali and New York.