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Dianna Settles99 flowers open like an open head (abundancing together, the living altar), 2023Acrylic, gouache, and colored pencil on wood panel81.3 x 61 cm (32 x 24 in)
14 September – 14 October 2023Vernissage: 14 September, 6 – 8 pmGalerie Marguo, ParisGalerie Marguo is pleased to present A Thousand Paths Bloom, a solo exhibition of recent paintings by the Atlanta-based artist Dianna Settles. On view from 14 September to 14 October, this exhibition marks the artist's first solo exhibition in Europe.
Drawing inspiration from time spent in both France and in the Southeastern United States, Settles' paintings collapse time, space, life, and death into narrative-driven works that chronicle farming, communal living, spirituality, and contemporary land-based struggles common to both geographies. Notably, Settles' most recent paintings incorporate images of friends, animals, and other figures who are no longer living, a reverent nod to the cyclical nature of life and the reality that we are collectively made up of all that has ever lived and died before.
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Artist Film
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Dianna Settles
Good is the reckoning that uses no tallies and does no counting, 2023Acrylic and colored pencil on panel
81.3 x 121.9 x 4.4 cm (32 x 48 x 1 3/4 in) -
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I want to feel a part of the world, to have stakes in the ways I move through the world that remind me of my place in it and its place in me.— Dianna Settles
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Living and working on the farm has helped me shift my relationship to failure. In growing things, no matter how much you learn, prepare for and work to maintain - there are numerous unknown issues that arise despite the time you’ve put in. Disease, pests, scavengers, draught, records lows, freak mid-summer hail storms. There is a brutality that refuses to relent to all the best laid plans. A ruthless learning curve.
No matter the heartache or frustration there is nothing to do besides understand the new defeats as possibilities or even certainties and group them into what you prepare for the next time.
— Dianna Settles -
Dianna Settles
Like a bed of tulips in the sun, The haymakers at work, 2023Acrylic and colored pencil on panel
81.3 x 121.9 x 4.4 cm (32 x 48 x 1 3/4 in) -
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Being forced to accept the new knowledge has helped me work through blocks, mistakes, and failings in my paintings. Releasing the desire for control in favor of something more alive.— Dianna Settles
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'A Thousand Paths Bloom' is a body of work on contact without claim. The scenes are intimate and the figures are occupied.— Irene Silt, poet and writer, about Dianna Settles' work
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Dianna Settles
Meadows of flame leap. More light for the understory, 2023Acrylic and colored pencil on panel
81.3 x 61 x 4.4 cm (32 x 24 x 1 3/4 in) -
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Dianna Settles
Old wisdoms, lively passions, nothing was missing. Not even heaven’s help, 2023Acrylic and colored pencil on panel
81.3 x 121.9 x 4.4 cm (32 x 48 x 1 3/4 in) -
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Dianna Settles
Cherishing what you have means devotion to it without delay, 2023Acrylic and colored pencil on panel
81.3 x 121.9 x 4.4 cm (32 x 48 x 1 3/4 in) -
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There is no painting of life, only life held in the painting. Parasites feed as the ground gives rise to food. Those who have passed appear as the rest. To awaken the dead, poetry must be the very stuff of life. Here we are as poets of action.— Irene Silt, poet and writer, about Dianna Settles' work
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From the background an uncomfortable hue floats forward. The aggression of earth does not settle. The most careful details are in the rot, the scars, the aftermath still acting. Things are flattened so that we may gaze over ourselves without classification or rank. We can recall or realize. The colors and shapes of memory morph into aspiration. Poetic compositions give way to our yearning. Failure’s refrain gives way to all merit. A merit that will never desert us.— Irene Silt, poet and writer, about Dianna Settles' work
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Dianna Settles
The little plants come toward me and the say, ‘you, we are aware can do nothing for us', 2023Acrylic and colored pencil on panel
81.3 x 61 x 4.4 cm (32 x 24 x 1 3/4 in) -
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Painting friends, family members, and companions who have passed into my group scenes has been a means of remembering all of the ways that the dead live on. As well as acting as a tool for parsing through my grief and carving out space for it in the midst of trudging forward.Their figures in the compositions remind me of their roles in every futurity, on a world that could never have their vitality wrung from it, but instead moves on forever shaped by their souls and intensities. They urge me to continue struggling towards a life worth living in common, against isolation, repression and the destruction of the world.— Dianna Settles
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Dianna Settles
How the world this summer was full of flowers. The fireflies are waiting, 2023Acrylic and colored pencil on panel
81.3 x 121.9 x 4.4 cm (32 x 48 x 1 3/4 in) -
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Portrait of Dianna Settles. © Dianna Settles. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Marguo.
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