Red-Chocker

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on February 24, 2012 at 8:02pm

Curator’s Comment:  

 

This is a striking picture. The anonymity of the figure made out of curvilinear blocks of solid primary color with an alternating black background reminds me of Gary Hume’s portraits from the Sensation show at the Brooklyn Museum many years ago.  And yet there is a crisp and vital freshness to this image, and I don’t find it derivative of anything else I’ve seen before.  While media isn’t identified, there is a painterly quality to the warm red and orange strokes on the right, resting against a solid black edge/mass on the left side.  Absent of naturalistic shadow, a strange glow emanates form the figure herself, with light burning in her tiny pinprick eyes.  I can’t quite make out the small adornments (prickly? insects?) in her choker necklace- small black shapes wring the solid black ground into the far side of the piece.  Ever so slightly off center, she shifts the axis and balance of the composition.  While several of your other works offer an economic reduction of information, it is the returned gaze/stare of the figure herself that holds my attention.  Rather than omitting her features altogether, she confronts me with what I’m unable or unwilling to see.