Magalie Guérin

Magalie Guérin works on multiple paintings and drawings at once, starting with a single scheme or shape that she repeats across different compositions, then allowing her response to each work to develop independently. As a result, a given body of work may suggest both a reoccurring sense of underlying structure and an unpredictable plasticity.

As part of its Community Day program in April 2018, Chinati hosted an open studio by Guérin at the Locker Plant. On view were several paintings that the artist brought with her from Chicago and completed in Marfa and a number of new works in various stages of development. To begin them, Guérin isolated shapes based on expired cactuses she discovered on the Chinati grounds—“desert dogs,” she dubbed them—and used them as templates to generate a series of drawings and paintings.

Originally from Montreal, Quebec, Guérin received a MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011. She has participated in many group exhibitions and had recent solo shows at Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago (January 2018); Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles (April 2017); soon.tw, Montreal (October 2016); Sector 2337, Chicago (March 2016); and Lyles & King, New York (September 2015). Guérin is also the author of Notes On (Green Lantern Press, 2016), an a-chronological artist’s diary in which she recounts her daily practice in the studio.