“This Is Not All There Is” is a story of transformations. With the new exhibit, the Drawing Center appears like an Italian chapel: squatting on cream columns, surrounded by the cobbles of SoHo. Inside, the works of Naudline Pierre line the walls like stained glass, framed in wooden archways.
The exhibit — organized by the Drawing Center’s Chief Curator, Claire Gilman — is as much a story about a transforming artist: it is the first showcase to focus exclusively on Pierre’s canvas drawings.
Entering the showroom of the Drawing Center, viewers get a sense of familiarity. Blending styles like abstractionism with Renaissance techniques, Pierre’s work may seem to point to something more traditional.
Setting these genres as her foundation, however, Pierre moves towards a mythical and unexplored artistic realm. Her drawings focus on a cast of feminine subjects, at once fiery and muted, angelic and serpentine, but never just one: always transforming. There is never a clear point in which the subject, or indeed the viewer, is saved or damned.
“There’s strife but also reward, love and tenderness but also evil,” said Pierre in a recent interview with “The Cut.”
In “This I Know to Be True,” a blackened space bends and distorts around dimly lit stars, hiding feminine figures that swirl and swim through the darkness. In “In the Infinite,” a winged woman is set ablaze in dampened shades of green and blue, seeming stationary but still transcending.
Throughout “There Is,” religious motifs blend and present themselves as ideas in tension. A surface-level confusion reveals itself as a beautiful, self-evident logic as one reaches the end of the exhibit. Within each lens is a disintegration of tradition, a freedom which, like her characters, allows Pierre to move towards her own Black and feminine mythology.
The daughter of a Haitian pastor, Pierre has often centered her work around spirituality. She is careful, however, not to become too attached to any particular labels.
“I said once that my dad is a Haitian pastor, and that I did grow up in church, experiencing supernatural things… But that’s not the only door through which to access my work. I want to be seen as a painter,” said Pierre during her residency in the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Avoiding explicit Christian symbols, Pierre finds inspiration in the fleeting nature of humanity: “It’s about doing what you need to do on this earth to get to another place that’s new, where you’ll be transformed, where you’ll be the self you were meant to be.”
There is, for Pierre, a faith involved in creating, too. By focusing solely on drawing, Pierre has surrendered some of the control she had in painting, forcing her to rely on her characters to come to her and guide their own creation.
Based in Brooklyn, Pierre has been making a name for herself with her recent residency in the Studio Museum in Harlem and a fantastic showing at this year’s Frieze, New York, which preluded the current exhibit at the Drawing Center. For those wishing to see the next evolution of this young artist’s journey, or just want to see a beautiful display of color and spirituality, “This Is Not All There Is” is a must-see. Entry is free and the exhibit is open until Sept. 10, 2023.
