Macha Poynder
1962
(FRANCE)
FRENCH
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Macha Poynder is a Russian-born, Paris-based artist whose multi-disciplinary oeuvre is inspired by the philosophies and aesthetic principles of Abstract Expressionism.
Education
Poynder settled permanently in Paris in 1982. From that year onwards, and while also attending the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, she studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, having been admitted directly into the third year; she graduated from the latter in 1986.
Technique
Although Poynder works across various media, including painting, drawing, photography, film, and light-based installations/performances (with her night paintings), painting and drawing have always remained the core of her practice.
Her approach emphasizes gesture, line, color, and space, as well as the interplay between structure and deconstruction. Giving painting itself the central role is essential to her work.
She operates on multiple levels, combining moments of movement with moments of stillness to create works defined by their complexity, depth, and vibration; above all, they must breathe and feel alive.
Her canvases blend an apparent air of chaos and nonchalance with rigorous structure; they are the product of a purposeful hand, honed by decades of practice.
Inspiration
Poynder often likens her painting process to creating music. She perceives colors as sounds that can form the visual equivalent of chords and soundscapes when they coexist within a composition. "Colors need to ring out," she says.
When she first encountered the work of the Abstract Expressionists - particularly during her many stays in New York throughout the 1990s - she found a family in them, a group of kindred spirits.
Furthermore, she describes painting as a form of dancing, with her lines recording the trajectories of both body and mind. For Poynder, painting is another way of thinking, a mode of thought in its own right.
Above all, she is driven by the need to unlearn, by a quest to forget and break free from rules, to step as far back as possible and let the painting well up from its own source.
Artist Statement
"I am reaching a point - a threshold - where the knowledge accumulated over decades can finally begin to slip away; I can at last feel the weight of its control and domination lifting. It is transforming into pure, direct perception. The unknown and the infinite can flow into the space that is thus becoming vacant. This expansion of perception widens the visual field, thereby enlarging the territory of painting—which in turn acts back upon perception. And so it continues, like an endless spiral. Painting is one way to penetrate beyond the known—beyond the limits the mind imposes on itself. Canvas, paper, and surface serve as gateways (or exits?) where the visible and the invisible touch and converge, and where the invisible reveals itself, however briefly."
Exhibitions
Poynder has exhibited internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include Buci Gallery, Paris, T1 + 2 Gallery, London, and Modernism, San Francisco.
Collections
Her work is in the permanent collections of the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the New York Public Library, and the Rijksmuseum, among others.
Galleries
Art Way, Paris
Modernism Inc., San Francisco
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