Second Contact 3

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on May 23, 2013 at 9:46am

Curator’s Comment:

 

While I like this work a great deal, it’s difficult for me to single out one particular exceptional painting from your series as they appear to systematically build off of one another.  The singularity of the one floating biomorphic form against a purple field is very engaging, as is the alternately repeated darker violet shapes against the golden articulated field.  Contrast of texture plays well into the dichotomy of these inverse counterparts.  The rough, eroded yellow-gold is more organic and weathered in opposition to the background, while the complementary violet employs a strong opposing rhythm.  This formally offsets the stability of the “one-ness” in Second Contact 3.  The purple-violet ground is in itself an unexpected, confident aesthetic choice.  I see it as having a flat graphic quality, so that instead of atmospherically sinking into the back of the space, the color sets up bold disparities of shape.  I also like that the large gold shape in this piece doesn’t quite fit into the top frame of the picture plane.  It gives the viewer a faint sense of tension, or uncomfortable squeezing of space.  Since the first and second in this series (triptych?) offset this shape ever so slightly, it gives the allusion of slow, gradual movement.