Ceysson & Bénétière

 Sadie Laska’s paintings are meditations on the fog of contemporary communication and the pleasurable agonies of trial and error painterly expression. The fuzz of electronic meanings in the crowded field of visual information that compete for our collective attention, supply the imagery that Laska employs to create paintings of pulsing energy and release.

In Laska’s work we get a flurry of frustrated symbols and signs — an hourglass within a circle (the symbol for extinction, Time is Running Out!), chaotic arrows, frenzied cartoon clouds, phone icons and the moon. These logos and Laska’s suggestive abstract shapes rarely stand alone but rather fit together or become enveloped by the whole, pushed back into the air and recesses of each painting. We see luminous colors and glowing magic marker scrawls that form weightless environments holding optimism and cultural detritus in equal measure.

Laska’s paintings are full of suggestions, helpful or otherwise, guiding us where to look. The idea that a painting is series of directives for the viewer to follow is interrogated in Laska’s work. The gravity of the paintings is often undercut by a palette of bright primary colors applied in thin washes with occasional bursts of bravura spray paint or brushy scribbles. Strident confidence is often relaxed and reintegrated into something pillowy. 

Ceysson & Bénétière