A Water Pump #2

Comment

Comment by David Han on July 27, 2015 at 11:07pm

Nice work! I like the way you use the color and balance of the whole painting.

Comment by Resident Curator on August 28, 2011 at 4:08pm

Curator’s Comment:

 

Water Pump # 2 has a Rube Goldberg attribute- a fantastically elaborate mechanism for a deceptively simple apparatus.  Without your title I wouldn’t recognize the subject, but I don’t know if that recognition is germane to the piece.  It has a fanciful quality with the interlocking shapes being laid out as if in a disjointed puzzle.  I wonder if you intend it to be almost humorous in its stylization.   I also really enjoy the flat expanses of color and lines moving out from the center.  It appears you’re quite adept in manipulating the gouache media’s inherent flatness.   I also think there’s strength in the first work-Water Pump #1, but the limited color palette doesn’t have the buoyancy of the (presumed) painting that followed.  Both images are totemic, and stack shapes vertically within the visual field, which are interrupted by more passive horizontal and diagonal lines.  I noticed a similar vertical stacking on one of the sculptural pieces you’ve posted as well.  Despite these works being separated by subject from many of your other works, there is a coherent thread. These works strike me as being paintings for artists.