The visitor to Francesca Gabbiani, Soul Keepers at Patrick Painter West encounters a series of works whose collective affect is a function of proximity. From afar, Gabbiani’s baroquely ornamented, unpopulated scenes read as sinister to a nearly melodramatic degree, defined as they are by certain tropes of impending terror (rustling leaves, flames climbing, candlesticks amidst pitch interiors).  But up close, the viewing experience is entirely reimagined: Those before ominous rooms and forests resolve into a dizzying construction of tiny paper cut-outs arranged just so, impressive in their technical acumen yet playful in their reliance on the most basic of crafts. That unexpected experiential transition—the threatening giving way to the craftily naïve—allows for a dynamic and multivalent gallery stroll. Along the way, the most successful works are also the most anecdotal and restrained. Join Us (2007), a small work in paper and gouache which presents an interior fragment of ostensibly Rococo origin, achieves spatial complexity through an extreme economy of representation, a few ornate gold outlines against a field of black paper. Like the entire contents of Soul Keepers, the work offers a panoply of suggestive ambiences without actually providing a viable narrative stage. Gabbiani’s rooms and forests exist at the very limit of plausibility, their spaces at once familiar and fantastical. The resultant tension gives this small show undeniable emotive heft.


























Images, from top to bottom:  Francesca Gabbiani, Soul Keepers, September 1 - 29, 2007, Patrick Painter Gallery, Under the Beasts, 2007, Colored paper and gouache on paper, 25 5/8 x 26 3/4 in., Courtesy of Francesca Gabbiani and Patrick Painter Gallery.  Francesca Gabbiani, Soul Keepers, September 1 - 29, 2007, Patrick Painter Gallery, Infinite Faun, 2007, Colored paper and gouache on paper, 90 1/2 x 44 1/2 in., Courtesy of Francesca Gabbiani and Patrick Painter Gallery.)