Moving Skies

This New York-born artist grew up in Geneva – in a home filled with art and among artists, musicians, collectors and academics. She began her own artistic journey by studying scenography at the Théâtre National in Strasbourg, then completed her fine art diploma at the Beaux-Arts in Paris. Later, after discovering primal theatre and training at Dartington College between 1979 and 1983 under the guidance of Mary Fulkerson and Steve Paxton (precursors, respectively, of Anatomical Release Technique and contact improvisation), she became involved with the experimental dance community and entered the feminist and queer scene. 

This approach to being in the world – grounded in emotions, the exploration of memory and the skeletal centre – quickly found its way into her painting practice. Drawing heavily from dreams and often depicting sleeping figures, Josefowitz's earlier work remains largely within the idioms of surrealism and affective realism. During this time, alongside painting, Josefowitz began creating her own choreographies – a pursuit she continued throughout her life and career.

In the 1990s, inspired by the nature and landscapes of Ojai, California, Josefowitz surrendered pure figuration to make room for abstraction and to embrace her longstanding interest in mysticism and spirituality. During this time, she also began laying canvases on the floor, allowing her entire body to participate in the act of painting. Series that emerged from this shift include – among others – the large-scale, geometric, melodic Prières (Prayers) from the 1990s, Kamasutras from around 2010, and, eventually, Ciels (Skies), which is at the centre of the exhibition at IMPORT EXPORT. 

Created by Josefowitz between 2010 and her untimely death from cancer in 2014, the nearly monochromatic, gestural and hypnotic Ciels (Skies) series acts as a painterly register of memories of places and emotional landscapes, brought to the surface by meditations the artist undertook after encountering the teachings of Osho, the founder of Dynamic Meditation. Osho encouraged combining meditation with vigorous exercise as a means to total awareness and ego liberation, which the artist integrated into her daily routine. 

Ciels – notably the last series Cathy Josefowitz painted before her passing – is also inseparable from her lifelong performative practice. She performed among the paintings, activating them with movement or simply by being present among them. These notions of embodiment and stage are fundamental to understanding Josefowitz's late paintings. In Ciels, the human figure is not rendered sharply but emerges from the chromatic field like a weather occurrence – an arresting yet temporary phenomenon, a performance of light, colour and vibration in infinite space. 

MOVING SKIES comprises 8 paintings from the Ciels (Skies) series and precedes a broader solo presentation of the artist's work, which the gallery will stage at the Artissima fair in Turin later this year.