red chair

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on October 26, 2014 at 10:56am

Curator’s Comments:  

 

Red Chair keeps popping up when I peruse the site, and the more I see it the more I appreciate its inherent lyrical sensibility, and solid painterly approach.  The white ground is lush- appearing to combine scumbled or glazed color within the opaque field, adding depth and richness to the work’s surface. The asymmetrical compositional balance of the form along with tilted legs offers a sense of sure movement- as if the personified chair is teetering across the picture plane.  The top of the chair doesn’t allow any more visual stability; in fact the blocking of analogous red hues confuses the spatial orientation of the back and seat, creating a chunky and somewhat precarious architectural form. The red fragments emanating from- or flying off – the main form move the more intense red hue into the atmosphere.  The result is a sense of deconstruction or dissolution, despite the sense that an additive process could easily depict the reverse building accumulation. The Still Life is the only other piece you’ve posted on the site which has this abstract dynamic, as the other paintings read as non-objective, formal plays of color and light, or symbolic heaps of ladders (Desire, and Blind Leading the Blind.)  I also enjoy the still life for similar visual characteristic, but the red chair strikes a noteworthy balance between formal construction of painting and suggested narrative.