Opening reception: White Linen Night, August 1, 6 – 9 pm

Octavia Art Gallery is pleased to present Symmetric Equivalence, an exhibition featuring artists Gil Bruvel, Stephen Chauvin, and Leslie Wilkes.  Through their preferred mediums, these artists explore organic and geometric forms whose patterns have an underlying symmetry or synchronicity.  Equivalent proportion and symmetry have long been associated with perfection in art, architecture and nature. This fundamental principle is explored – albeit in distinctly different aesthetic approaches – by the three artists included in the exhibition.

Born in Australia and raised in France, Bruvel’s father was a skilled cabinetmaker who introduced him to craftsmanship and design at an early age. During his extensive career, Gil Bruvel has followed an intrinsic flow of artistic expression through a variety of mediums and forms.  Bruvel says, “If there is an intention to understand and completely open oneself up to what is being observed, then patterns start to define themselves and intuitively assemble into interesting pieces of artwork.”  Parts of Bruvel’s works may be organic or geometric: simple planes and angles, fragments of architectural language, or graceful sinuous forms. These striking, evocative sculptures, reveal an underlying fluidity that exists simultaneously within the physical, quantum, and metaphoric realms.  Bruvel has exhibited both nationally and internationally including exhibits in France, Japan, Monaco, Dubai, Denmark, Germany, Australia and The Netherlands.

New Orleans architect Stephen Chauvin received his Master of Architecture from Tulane University.  Often drawing inspiration from history, Chauvin credits the high back chairs of C.R. Mackintosh as influential upon his own design of Halo chairs, a numbered series of chairs that adorn and address the head.  In his most recent acrylic Tetra series, Chauvin seeks to reduce and evaporate the chair into a simple and dynamic geometric form.  He manipulates the tetrahedron between rectangular planes in hopes of seating the body, object, eye, and psyche.  Stephen is the president of Chauvin Arkhitekton, which he began in 1983 to design, build, and fabricate architecture and its elements.

Leslie Wilkes’ paintings on canvas and gouaches on paper are an explosion of shape and color.  With near perfect symmetry, the colors of these works exhibit an opaque, smooth surface.  “Wilkes’ geometric patterns are unique in that their repeated patterns tend to expand outward from the exact center of the composition." [1]  Stimulation of the visual is of great importance to Wilkes, who chooses nuanced but dissonant colors to keep the eye moving around the paper or canvas.  Slight irregularities also create subtle shifts in the pattern, as the artist does not use tape or outlines on her works on canvas.  “Her geometric abstractions are uniquely her own, a twenty-fist century response to geometric painting explored in Europe and America in the last century.” [2]  Originally from Athens, Georgia, Wilkes now resides in the small west Texas town of Marfa.  Wilkes’ works are in various private and public collections including eBay, Inc., Palo Alto, the Lannan Foundation, Sante Fe, the Fairmont Hotel, San Francisco, the Rosewood Hotel, Abu Dhabi, and the Four Seasons, Houston.