Asylum

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on January 11, 2013 at 5:12pm

Curator’s Comment:

 

The ochre/brown glaze (I’m thinking encaustic?) medium is most effective in these pieces, instilling warmth in otherwise desolate spaces. Asylum has a lighter waxy air that helps soften the direct confrontational positioning and linear perspective of the architecture.  The wire lines breaking across the top horizontal space are thinly refined; I also enjoy how they’re slightly interrupted by organic textural variation and subtle umber flecks.  The weathering effect of the scraped surface and feathery opaque marks gives the space a feeling of patina of erosion.  While all of the windows shield our view of the interior, the structure loses what otherwise could be its foreboding presence by the deft handling of surface and light.  I do see Abandoned City as a much more visceral, gloomy space.  Rather than giving the impression of urban economic blight that could be suggested by the title, the piece takes on an ominous prognostic or apocalyptic inevitability.  Here, the brown glaze evokes charred remains or darkened tar.  As yet on a purely aesthetic level, I enjoy the haptic, physical sensibility of the painting. The layering of surface makes me instinctively recognize it as an image and dimensional innate object.