InTheStreamOfThings

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on September 30, 2013 at 3:43pm

Curator’s Comments:  

 

In the Stream of Things is a marvelously fluid work, though there is a startling visceral edge to the organic configuration.  The split complementary red-violet and golden-yellow color scheme is strongly complementary, breaking up the otherwise homogeny of the curvilinear shapes of the same size and relative weight.  More neutralized brown and blue tints soften the dramatic contrast, but I don’t read them as spatial fluctuations.  While shadow and highlight are present in the undulations, the forms all press up to the front of the picture plane and envelop the viewer, rather than recede into a targeted atmospheric horizon.  There is something slightly unsettling about this pictorial crush of volume and mass.  Perhaps the instinctive association with entrails or internal organs is because of the painting’s proximity to the other works in the portfolio that depict human hearts and reference deep tissue, etc.   Viewed independently I can also envision floral petal shapes, or magnified fauna.  But I do enjoy the pure abstraction/non-objectivity of this particular work, as the pieces with stronger singular focal points by design don’t permit for as much allover movement. The ambiguity of the image, with its defined folds and twists of space pull the viewer into the ‘stream of things’, and holds us there to appreciate its course.