
Louise Despont has been showing her intricate drawings in colored pencil and graphite at Nicelle Beauchene since the gallery first opened; “Harmonic Tremor” is her fourth show at the Lower East Side space since 2008. Despont returns to South Asia (the works in her 2010 show were created during a Fulbright Fellowship in India), this time focusing on canang sari, a daily offering Balinese Hindus make to their supreme God, as well as the spiritual importance of volcanoes. (A “harmonic tremor” refers to the release of seismic energy that precedes a volcanic eruption.) The eight drawings in the show—some on only a few antique ledger book pages, others on a dozen or more that together form larger sheets—present abstract geometric forms and radiating sound waves layered over topographic depictions of waterways, volcanoes and other markers of the Balinese landscape.