To understand this piece, go and find a copy of the play ART. I saw it with George Wendt and Joe Morton in New York in 1999. It was a great show about a white painting.
Also, yes, I am aware this is not truly a white painting. I can see the stripes, the glimpses of red. Again, read ART and you'll understand. Beyond anything, this is a painting that wants you to make an assumption, that it is a white painting, and then dismiss it until you look closely, see the gentle bands. They're there, and to some, that gives it content, but only within the context held within the eyes that are willing to seek it out. The fact is it IS a white painting, but the hints are there like a falsified clue at a crime scene; these hints are meant to send us somewhere else, somewhere we will never return from. Me? I didn't take the bait. I've seen ART.
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This is a lesser Diebenkorn. I mean, that's still saying something, but as far as Diebenkorn goes, it ain't much. It's somewhere between his works, and it actually feels a little like Reclining Nude which is hanging across the gallery.
The pieces designed to live above your heads are often difficult. It took me ages to find Fulcrum, right across the way from Coil #2, but here, the piece is actually presented to your on roughly eye-level if you are looking at it from the second floor over-look. It's at a distance, but it is a piece that requires you to consider it closely, deeply, and with the distance, pretty much the only way you can is via a photo. As this was created in 2010, i have to think that was the point; visitors to museums today come with cameras, and everything will be photographed.
I like Piet Mondrian. I tend to be less generous to those who walk his footpath. Quaytman is an artist whose work Moon Falacy is among my all-time faves, but here, it's simplicity itself...
... except. Except the fact that up-close, those lines continue, create more squares, but as covered, hidden, but still evident. It is a piece that as a whole gives little to nothing, but within the span of a finger-to-thumb, reveals more, draws you in, almost demands you to call it on something, though you're never sure what. This is as figurativist as you can get, ain't it? It's a lovely piece, one that plays with three ideas at once.
First, there is the fact that every item in this picture is alone. The glass and the postcard are as separated as they would be in two different paintings. In fact, they are two separate paintings, with the postcard being a distant prince, the only indicator that items can have interactions with one another is a postcard of a painting from the 17th Century. It is Wonner reminding us that in the 20th century, we were totally alone, removed from the closeness of those earlier times. Second, it is half a Black Painting. The bottom portion is inky blackness, and upon that is built this piece, where lonliness lives. It is one of two things - either the figuration is pushing the blackness down, asserting itself, or it could be that the lonely existence is teetering on the verge of being subsumed by the blackness. Either way, it's creepy. Third, it is about the return of precision. Wonner's Diebenkon-esque work is done, and here, he is creating works that are given a place of reality. A lonely reality, but reality nonetheless. Funkadoobiest. That is what I would qualify this as. Wiley is a personal fave, and this is weird, but it is really in the deatils that this one feels, I dunno, whole.
There are words, there are unrelated (or at least lightly-related) images, and there's a weird fish. The overall effect is at once Surrealist, and stylized, like an Art Deco homage to the dreams of Man Ray. It's nothing like that in presentation, but it's a cool phrase that I've been wanting to use... There is joy and terror and wonder and threat to this piece. I Love the effect it gives off, that there is life, and the connection to Heironymous Bosch, the master of mingling horror with frantic joy with existential angst with pure flippin' glee, only ramps it up a little! If you can see anything other than an octopus eye, or the Eye of Sauron, then you are officially better at looking at art than I am.
This piece means nothin to me. Staring at it for any length of time feels like chewing a rice cake until it falls apart so thoroughly it slides down your throat. There's nothing here. Nothing. Even the pieces I dislike, like most of the Dumb Objects, I feel something for, but this is like a Warhol film: I'm too damned bored to feel anything. hI am 100% certain that there is great depth to this piece, that it is making many statements about meaning within the context of artistry, about only understanding a portion of anything that is in front of you because unless you look deeper, you're only getting a tiny fraction, about the inpermanence of what we see as opposed to the mass that is hidden from us. I am sure all these things exist, but for the most part, I do not experience them through this one.
Because it is too calming. Perhaps it is the transluscence of the blue, of the calming aspect of the shape, but staring at this, as I often have, no matter how ragged I may feel going towards it, leaving it behind, I am smoother, softer, less harried. I'm a fan of Sam Francis these days, something I could not say at the start of this process. His work often features cell-like segments stacked together, as if looking at a section of muscle under a microscope. These works are confronting an idea of abstraction vs. representation being an ideal of a time. If these paintings were created today, we would instantly come to the idea that they are representations of blow-ups, images of real things that were too small to see with the naked eye, and Red in Red may be read under those condition as a tumor impinging on musscle tissue. This is not that, at least I don't think so. It is an image created of cell of colour, forms stacked to form an all-over painting. It feels powerful when you take it in as a whole.
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Your HostChristopher J Garcia - Curator, Fan Writer, Podcaster, and a guy who just loves art. Archives
February 2019
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