Experiment

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on March 24, 2013 at 11:01am

Curator’s Comments:

 

Experiment attracts me with its chalky white passages contrasting earthy sections of pale ochre yellow and textural brown umber shapes.  The dominant brown section has a leathery surface, reminding me of lizard skin or cracked earth.   Darker modeling around this central shape reads as shadow, deepening the channel or opening for the organic forms. The larger fissure lines around it further fragment the ground into large sections, but don’t necessarily reveal a surface underneath.  While scale isn’t indicated on the piece, I see it as a large topographic plain.  Perhaps this is contradicted by the inclusion of collage materials.  The complementary piece entitled Root is even more visceral, having a raw, scavenged quality to the line- work below the expressed ground level. The image in fact does seem to exist underground, in a cross section of the exposed terrain. The more square proportions of the piece exert a different type of tension.  Rather than allowing a traditional landscape orientation, Root appears more compact and direct. The concentration of deeper values adds a mood of mystery and primordial secrecy.