‘Color Chords’
Mel Prest
May 10 - June 14, 2025
Galleri Urbane is pleased to announce ‘Color Chords’ a solo exhibition by San Francisco artist Mel Prest. The artist returns for her fourth solo exhibition at Galleri Urbane in gallery two.
In her fourth solo exhibition, Mel Prest’s latest work in Color Chords reverberates rhythms of deep blues, purples, and lilac hues. Inspired by the ‘blue note’ oft employed in Jazz and Blues, the semi-discordant tonal affairs of color create unexpected harmonies that reveal the subtle structure of her reality. The latticework – layered lines of removed brushstoke – is built atop another revealing shifting planes of perspective and color. Prest is careful to note that these lines aren't perfect, “Overtime things develop, you can see it in handwoven work and also in mine,” says Prest. “You can see a brush reload, or maybe my wrist jitters, or lines get closer or further apart; the waves of time working.”
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Get a closer look at ‘Color Chords’ on video:
“My color looks like a flavor, a kind of touch, sound, or scent. I work with colors I first experience in the outdoors, bring these back into studio, and reimagine in paint and line. The paintings become a new memory place, a location, a feeling, a sound. I use a large brush to layer the first thin films of paint over a prepared wooden panel. The aggregated color arises slowly, sometimes indicating a season, a location, or an emotion. Using a small brush, I paint a second layer of thin, freehand line that forms a skewed scaffold, relating to both the shape of the panel and the color of the field. The final layer is an improvisational mesh, whose color combinations harmonize and create optical mirages (film color) that hover above the surfaces. The linework reminds me of music, with my three mixed colors creating a chord of musical notes.”
As humans, we search for structure; natural patterns revealing subsurface design, mathematical principles, harmony between subatomic elements of our reality. Physical and conceptual revelations construct how we understand and perceive daily rhythms and life. “I think of time as like a wheel, things repeat and things come back. Some of the structure of these squares is a circle in that way,” says Prest. This platonic essence came to Mel following her MFA, where she had to peel away external influences; “I took away the big brushstrokes that weren't mine; I had all the 80’s people in my mind when I was in RISD. It was interesting to distill down that it was color and a lack of brushstroke, which is where the line came in,” says Prest.
"I believe it was John Cage who once told me, 'When you start working, everybody is in your studio – the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all your own ideas – all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you're lucky, even you leave'" – Painter Philip Guston (Conversation with Harold Rosenberg, 1974)
Exhibition Install Images:
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Mel checks in from her San Francisco studio to answer some questions about Color Chords
These elements meld in Color Chords. The line, structure, and color made prevalent in her oeuvre are explored further - with these paintings specifically referencing the harmonious rhythms that pervade her practice. Lived experience finds a new language - non-verbal but experiential. Her paintings manifest as people, places, flowers, trees, seascapes - entrenched memories from life. “Sometimes there are people who are now attached to the paintings. It's much more esoteric, it doesn’t look like my friends but it feels like my friend,” says Prest. The paintings act as a visual manifestation of the rhythms of life; thrumming through the everyday, waiting for one to hear their music. As Prest says when describing this feeling, "For me it's this thing, 'Don't you hear it?'"
Mel Prest’s paintings focus on color and perceptual visual relationships. Her work has been exhibited internationally including: The Drawing Center, New York; The Weatherspoon Museum of Art, Durham; IS Projects, Leiden; Saturation Point, London; Nakaochiai Gallery, Tokyo. Prest’s first solo museum show: Mel Prest: The Golden Hour, was held at the Schneider Museum of Art in Ashland, Oregon and featured a catalogue essay by John Yau. Prest has been awarded residencies at The MH deYoung Museum; The Ragdale Foundation; The Sam and Adele Golden Artist Foundation; Willapa Bay AIR; The Wassaic Project; and Vermont Studio Center. Her work is held in private and public collections at:Apple; The Berkeley Art Museum; The Crocker Museum of Art; Google; Kaiser Permanente; Marin Health; The Mills College Art Museum, The Schneider Museum of Art; among others. She is represented by Galleri Urbane, Dallas, TX and K.Imperial Fine Art, San Francisco, CA.
Mel Prest received her BFA in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design and MFA from Mills College in Oakland. Mel is an advisory board member of Root Division, a non- profit arts organization in San Francisco and served as a board member from 2012-2014. Prest served on the advisory board of The Art Monastery Project, Calvi della Umbria and Labro, Italy from 2007-2010 and on the artist advisory board of Trestle Gallery in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York from 2012-2021.
As an independent curator, Prest has organized shows from Amsterdam to Zagreb. She is a founding member of Transmitter, a collaborative curatorial gallery initiative in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. Mel Prest lives and works in San Francisco, CA.