Valaria Davis Untitled

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on August 15, 2012 at 1:17pm

Curator’s Comment:  

 

The paint quality in this untitled piece is absolutely luscious- the scumbled and encrusted texture offering an excavation into the multi- layered surface.  That I can make out crudely drawn figures enhances the elusive and furtive expression.   The red-orange and blue pigment sets up a strong complementary relationship, intensifying each other, and breaking for the more subtle grey tones.  I also like the very thin lines that create fissures throughout the piece.  Like threads in a textile fragment, the image seems to have eroded over time.  I feel the two portraits share some of this scoured and stratified sensibility, but the graphic quality of the faces creates more distinct and hierarchical focal points.  The gestures of the figures also intimate a subliminal narrative, as I can make out an abstracted figure with his head lowered through the textures in the more muted (# 2) piece.  But the lack of specificity and clarity leave me feeling they works are deeply personal and therefore best tap into a collective psyche.