Servane Mary

Servane Mary (b. 1972, Dijon, France) is a French-American artist based in New York, US. She received her BA in the Art and Space department of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs(ENSAD), Paris, France, in 1998. Mary is known for conceptual work in which she prints historical images of women on unconventional materials, as well as for paintings that share with the earlier work engagement with the legacy of image making. Her new works, however, mark the artist’s recent return to painting. Although highly abstract, the paintings share with her previous work an interest in reproducibility and technical processes by confronting the materiality of what so many printed objects originate from: the grid. Lacking any hierarchical structure, the paintings have no beginning, end or centre. They are the medium and the subject matter and highlight Mary’s interest in ceding control rather than producing expressive or intentional brushstrokes. As the artist often says, she “lets the painting make itself.”

Portrait: Photo by Jason Schmidt