Press Release

“One may say that on each wall there are 4 imprints of a n°50 brush at 30 cm intervals. Saying it is fine, seeing it is better. This is painting!”

Niele Toroni, Brussels, 26 March, 2009

Greta Meert Gallery presents its third solo exhibition by Niele Toroni (Muralto-Locarno,1937; has lived in Paris since 1959).

For over 40 years Niele Toroni has worked with a fixed pattern: imprints are made with a n°50 paint brush at regular 30 cm intervals. Each “work”, which the artist himself prefers to call “Travail/Peinture’ (Work/Painting), is made with this procedure and is applied on a medium of a varying nature: canvas, paper, carton, wall, ceiling, etc.

By applying this pattern first in 1967, Niele Toroni became one of the artists who initiated an innovative vision on painting: reduced to its elementary material expression (paint, brush, color, support) and a minimal though necessary act of the artist.  Harald Szeeman, the legendary curator, referred to this as the ‘visualization of a method’.

To argue that Niele Toroni’s works are all identical, comes down to remaining stuck at the elementary proposition of the work, failing to look at its wider deployment, failing to observe it.

This exhibition is set-up along the three walls and windows of the new gallery space. The new works, like the television screen and the ‘collective installation’, existing of 8 canvasses, are fresh and surprising. The artist also shows older work, two more classic paintings from the 1970’s and a palette from 1981.