My Initial Response to the Placing Color exhibition:
I enjoyed the Placing Color exhibition far more than I would have imagined. Usually the minimalistic art really bores me. It turned out though, that I was very engaged with the work, perhaps mainly because each artists work was scattered throughout the gallery. I found myself really comparing them, jumping around from this piece in the corner to a piece across the gallery on the opposing wall. I was interested in picking out which works belonged to which artist, taking in the differences in the artists' styles and their particular bodies of work. Although I certainly would have thought about how and why these artists works were being shown together, the placement of the works not only facilitated that, it actually (in my experience of the show) forced it upon the viewer and made it sort of fun.
I was especially fond of Carrie's work. I loved how the colors and sizes of the lines played off of one another. I feel that her work really exemplified the title of the exibition--"placing" color. I focussed on the relationships between the colors and the "moods" of the colors. I found myself confused by the statement about architecture, however. It was nice to have some incite into the process behind the work, but I certainly was not picking up on architecture and interior spaces at all within the work itself. Surely that is not really the point and is probably a silly comment, but it was one of my reactions while I was in the gallery.
Brett's (I believe his last name was Baker?) work was very beautiful. It certainly is a body of work about "this and that" rather than "either/or" as the posted statement suggested. There is a sense of obsession, accumulation, time, layering, and organized messiness. It made me think of fabric in its materiality. It became something other than a canvas. I wanted to touch it. It was like picking out a shirt in a department store. There was an amazing intensity, depth, and vibrancy to the work. This is especially true of the red corridor. The experience of walking so tightly along that red canvas was actually a little unsettling for me. It luffed as I walked through, making me feel off balance and disoriented. I didn't stay in there very long because it really brought on a feeling of discomfort, I felt trapped. The funny thing is, despite how close I was to the canvas, now that I think about it, I did not even touch it.
Kayla's (and I do not remember her last name) work was interesting as well, but in a very different way still. I, personally, took a lot away from the statement regarding her work which was on the wall. It really changed my perception of her work and made me a little more receptive. I was particularly swayed by the part which described her colors as forming loose groupings which seem ready at any moment to disperse. I would not have really thought about that but when I read it, I realized how much movement and playfulness emerged in them for me.
As far as ties between the works are concerned, they are all colorful, non-representational (for the most part, Kayla's are arguable), linear, and for me, very engaging. They all strive to express some sort of relationship between colors, and they all do this in very different ways.
During the short talk, Kayla Mohammadi said she ultimately wants a painting to be “surprising”. I can identify with this need for an image to be totally unique and questionable. Mohammadi’s paintings, “The Good Marriage” and “Starfruit” reminded me of a rear view mirror that frames an attractive, yet unidentifiable combination of forms and colors. I really enjoyed the perceptual places that Mohammadi creates. She depicts this transitional space, which the viewer is able to experience moving through. Portals and other structural images make space recede and advance. I can definitely see the inspiration of Matisse throughout Mohammadi’s work, with the skewed angles of interior spaces and intense reds and blue-greens.
Carrie’s work equally as “surprising”, especially in her process and the subject of her work. These horizontal structures also depict a specific space that we as the viewer are able to move throughout, except the way of seeing Carrie’s works are so much different. Your eye moves across, back and forth continuously in each work until it creates this experience of spinning around an interior space. The colors and surfaces in each work are so specific; you can tell they are all about this location and specific church interior. The softer edges between colors reminded of Rothko’s paintings, instead the lines are vertical in Carries work and form architectural interior space rather than an uncontained horizontal landscape.
Baker said during the short opening talk that he also would like his work to be “surprising”. I did not get a chance to experience the installation piece yet, but the other paintings that I did look at closely were really intriguing in their surfaces. The combination of colors in thickly applied paint really seemed to shimmer across the angular forms. Baker’s paintings create an interactive space that is surprising in the amount matter and physical presence of object. I found myself questioning what exactly was underneath all of this paint, and connecting to the craft and time put into the work.
I definitely need to go back to the gallery to have a closer look. This show especially pertains to my work and interests with color and creating unusual spaces!
I don’t think this show could have come at a better time. The works in the gallery are speaking about issues in which I’m very interested at this point—they are held together in that they are about color, but they are also very much grounded in experience and place.
I was very taken by Carrie’s larger works. They reminded me of Barnet Newman’s color fields, but they are so much looser, less geometric, more fluid, and more lively in a way. While Newman’s extremely bright colors are almost jarring, Carrie’s colors are still bright, but more naturalistic and more intimate, more inviting. The other difference is that Carrie leaves evidence of her hand—she calls herself a “geometric colorist” and the works certainly are geometric, but not in the same rigid way that Newman’s paintings are. The way she’s putting canvases together also imparts a feeling of transition, of shifts in seeing, in experiencing the space. Carrie talked about the paintings as derived from experiences of the church St. Francis Xavier, primarily through the sections of colors that make up both the architectural space, but also the living space of people and the landscape outside that is seen through the windows. She described her process of mixing things up with prisms and using video footage as ways to get to these paintings. So while she’s interested in experience of place, it is not a rigidly observed place that replicates precisely what she is seeing from one viewpoint, but instead an experience that is connected to and transformed through memory, and also an awareness of others’ experiences in that space. This is really how we understand place—not just by being there in the present, but also by having been there in the past, by imagining ourselves there when we are not, and by dreaming of ourselves there in the future.
Kayla’s works interest me for the way they oscillate between representation and abstraction. I especially liked Kiwi and The Good Marriage because they are very harmonious and yet still dynamic. In Kiwi, she uses brushstrokes in varying ways across the canvas, making individual marks at some points and smooth, almost patina-like surfaces at others. Her canvases are built up—worked and reworked—there are layers upon layers of colors, which is apparent in the way colors come through from the inside of the works, but especially if you look at the side of the painting. I have only just started playing with layering colors and it was really interesting to try to take apart how she was layering colors and creating the surfaces she does. In some works these surfaces become spaces, allowing you in, in others you are shoved out, unable to enter, and in still others you slip out when you try to enter a space. They are like Cezanne’s paintings, only allowing us “in” to the representational space half-way. There is also a feeling of being blocked in several of them due to the way she’s using frames. This made me remember what Carrie said about a lot of my first paintings from the summer, which is that it was as though I was setting up compositions so that you want to enter and go far in, but you get blocked, hung up on something in the middle- or foreground of the canvas. While most of her color chords don’t draw me in and her paintings tend on the solid side, the compositions do create spaces in a way that intrigues me.
Brett Baker’s two bodies of works are less about translating an experience of place, so much as creating a new awareness of place in terms of color. His large-scale red panel that is close to the wall is like a giant Rothko, but rather than having a line on the floor that you cannot walk past, he pushes you close to the work. In this way it becomes like Serra’s Tilted Arcs, something that surrounds you, and directs you to interact with it, move through it. And you must move through it because the color is reflected all around you—onto the floor and the wall. In this way it is almost like a James Turrell light hallway. Color becomes a substance that you are in, it becomes the space, which is wonderful—an awakening experience. Baker’s smaller canvases are built-up layers of brushstrokes that have not been altered or smoothed out—just paint. They are so thick that my first reaction was “where is the canvas?!” He did them over the course of years. While I like the colors that he used and the principle of building a painting over time, the actual textured surfaces remind me of viscera, of body—they’re like entrails or vomit even (and oddly enough, like my paper discs from the very beginning of the year—I can see that now). So I suppose that while I like paint for it being painty, I don’t like it when it is totally uncontrolled. The colors draw me in and then once I see the colors, the texture doesn't give me a reason to stay there, it even pushes me away.
Overall I really enjoyed the show in terms of how these artists are translating experiences of place and creating new experiences for viewers and I've gone back to look a number of times. I am definately looking forward to the panel next week.
I really enjoyed Placing Color. I did not expect to become as engaged with the works as I did, and it was a pleasant and emotional surprise. I started my experience with the show by reading what was written about each artist and what each artist had to say about their work. I thought this would be a good idea since I am always looking to learn more about how to successfully communicate about my work.
Carrie Patterson’s works were described as “invented interiors that reflect the experience of inhabiting space.” Patterson stated that her hope was to create a “poetic physical translation of place.” Her description of process was fascinating and really gave me a key to personally unlocking the work. I was able to not only envision Patterson’s box with a prism in it, her looping footage of meditative spaces, and drawings of churches but feel them in the work. I found I was really able to get into the work and feel quiet spaces, solid walls, etc reflected back to me. Moreover, I was able to see Patterson’s experience of these factors and her personal and physical reflections of them in her paintings and sculptures. I feel that the juxtaposition of geometric shape, the rectangular forms, with the organic lines, colors, textures, and gradients mirrored the juxtaposition and process of sensing and inhabiting spaces which are architectural, solid, and cornered and reflecting back how the experiencing of inhabiting makes one feel: the building and the body, respectively. I think that Patterson’s description of her work was not only an effective use of language because it built a gateway into deeper appreciation and understanding of the work.
Kayla Mohammadi’s explanation of her work explained that she had influences beyond the typical suburban landscape which included Scandinavian, Islamic, and Persian backgrounds. She states that the paintings take her somewhere beyond what she already knows and that they come from landscape, still life, or interior spaces. Mohammadi’s use and placement of color are really what fulfill her explanations of her work. Maohammadi used color to create space. I was quick to look at the paintings, see spaces such as rooms, rivers, etc, and think: she painted a room, river, etc. However, as I spent more time with each painting I realized that Mohammadi didn’t paint a room, she placed colors purposefully to create the feeling of space. The different temperatures, textures, and treatments of color that Mohammadi employed really gave a sense of space, depth, and feeling. Each contained many spaces that I was able to form not only a knowledge of but opinions and feelings about because the colors she used were evocative of the different qualities and states of juxtapositions of light at boundaries.
Brett Baker’s description of his work states that is an interaction and reflection where human presence completes the work and that the works have a presence not unlike a portrait. Baker says that the work faces the viewer with presence and clarity alive in the insistent, evident, humanity of its construction. I found Baker’s statements about his work to be very thought provoking and true. When looking at Baker’s smaller works I found myself searching through the layers, trying to find ones that were deeper and deeper under layers of paint. Each mark of each color in every layer had character; each one had a different texture, each went in its own direction and was topographically different, each one’s color was differently affected by the colors around it. I was exploring through many different and individual facets that ultimately made a coherent whole which had its own personality, emotion, and presence. The works had a very intense and strong presence due to their thickness and layers of paint, the obvious time spent on them, and the fact that they say heavily on the wall with obvious form and dark color. The works’ presence caused me to become more present. This presence, personality, and layering caused me to think of the works, like Baker said, as portraits. I immediately thought of them as portraits of people, which each stroke of paint being a memory, trait, experience, etc. However, looking at the titles such as Hand and Axel made me think that maybe this type of portrait (with presence and layers that represent facets of identity) could be made for inanimate (or animate) objects like axels or hands. What then gives each work its humanity? Perhaps Baker himself.
Placing Color, what can I say other than intimate. After listening to the three artist, Brett Baker, Kayla Mohammadi, and Carrie Patterson brief description about their work, I came to understand why placing big blocks of color on a canvas was very important to them. Their work is about space, place and action of destination by which each painting requires a viewer’s eye to set them in motion and active their spatial significance.
I was equally surprised and moved by all three artists works. Kayla Mohammadi’s technique of painting and presenting these spaces as places is what caught my eye the most. She presents these spaces as transitional, they create depth almost like some sort of portal, where the viewer moves in and out. I was not astonished when she mentioned that she gets her inspiration and motif of this window like from Mattise, the enclosure and the opening.
Brett Baker’s work was amazing. The texture he managed to create with layers of paint, balanced color and mark making. It constructed this place exploring it as an interaction and reflection. His painting encourages a close, physical experience of color. The color extends laterally to such an extent that the viwer is completely immersed. In all of his painting, I found myself either questioning myself about what is under all that layering or I found myself intimidated that I did not want to look at the painting for too long because it invaded my personal space.
Carrie Patterson’s works moved me tremendously. I loved the fact that the movement she creates in her paintings is not in and out but rather side-by-side. When I was looking at the paintings I found my eye reading one section of paint before moving to the next one. I was struggling with balance as almost if the colors were in competition with one another. However, I also loved the fact that all these blocks of paint created an individual space that carries its own experience.
I really cannot wait for the panel to hear their own interpretation of their work.
My Initial Response to the Placing Color exhibition:
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the Placing Color exhibition far more than I would have imagined. Usually the minimalistic art really bores me. It turned out though, that I was very engaged with the work, perhaps mainly because each artists work was scattered throughout the gallery. I found myself really comparing them, jumping around from this piece in the corner to a piece across the gallery on the opposing wall. I was interested in picking out which works belonged to which artist, taking in the differences in the artists' styles and their particular bodies of work. Although I certainly would have thought about how and why these artists works were being shown together, the placement of the works not only facilitated that, it actually (in my experience of the show) forced it upon the viewer and made it sort of fun.
I was especially fond of Carrie's work. I loved how the colors and sizes of the lines played off of one another. I feel that her work really exemplified the title of the exibition--"placing" color. I focussed on the relationships between the colors and the "moods" of the colors. I found myself confused by the statement about architecture, however. It was nice to have some incite into the process behind the work, but I certainly was not picking up on architecture and interior spaces at all within the work itself. Surely that is not really the point and is probably a silly comment, but it was one of my reactions while I was in the gallery.
Brett's (I believe his last name was Baker?) work was very beautiful. It certainly is a body of work about "this and that" rather than "either/or" as the posted statement suggested. There is a sense of obsession, accumulation, time, layering, and organized messiness. It made me think of fabric in its materiality. It became something other than a canvas. I wanted to touch it. It was like picking out a shirt in a department store. There was an amazing intensity, depth, and vibrancy to the work. This is especially true of the red corridor. The experience of walking so tightly along that red canvas was actually a little unsettling for me. It luffed as I walked through, making me feel off balance and disoriented. I didn't stay in there very long because it really brought on a feeling of discomfort, I felt trapped. The funny thing is, despite how close I was to the canvas, now that I think about it, I did not even touch it.
Kayla's (and I do not remember her last name) work was interesting as well, but in a very different way still. I, personally, took a lot away from the statement regarding her work which was on the wall. It really changed my perception of her work and made me a little more receptive. I was particularly swayed by the part which described her colors as forming loose groupings which seem ready at any moment to disperse. I would not have really thought about that but when I read it, I realized how much movement and playfulness emerged in them for me.
As far as ties between the works are concerned, they are all colorful, non-representational (for the most part, Kayla's are arguable), linear, and for me, very engaging. They all strive to express some sort of relationship between colors, and they all do this in very different ways.
During the short talk, Kayla Mohammadi said she ultimately wants a painting to be “surprising”. I can identify with this need for an image to be totally unique and questionable. Mohammadi’s paintings, “The Good Marriage” and “Starfruit” reminded me of a rear view mirror that frames an attractive, yet unidentifiable combination of forms and colors. I really enjoyed the perceptual places that Mohammadi creates. She depicts this transitional space, which the viewer is able to experience moving through. Portals and other structural images make space recede and advance. I can definitely see the inspiration of Matisse throughout Mohammadi’s work, with the skewed angles of interior spaces and intense reds and blue-greens.
ReplyDeleteCarrie’s work equally as “surprising”, especially in her process and the subject of her work. These horizontal structures also depict a specific space that we as the viewer are able to move throughout, except the way of seeing Carrie’s works are so much different. Your eye moves across, back and forth continuously in each work until it creates this experience of spinning around an interior space. The colors and surfaces in each work are so specific; you can tell they are all about this location and specific church interior. The softer edges between colors reminded of Rothko’s paintings, instead the lines are vertical in Carries work and form architectural interior space rather than an uncontained horizontal landscape.
Baker said during the short opening talk that he also would like his work to be “surprising”. I did not get a chance to experience the installation piece yet, but the other paintings that I did look at closely were really intriguing in their surfaces. The combination of colors in thickly applied paint really seemed to shimmer across the angular forms. Baker’s paintings create an interactive space that is surprising in the amount matter and physical presence of object. I found myself questioning what exactly was underneath all of this paint, and connecting to the craft and time put into the work.
I definitely need to go back to the gallery to have a closer look. This show especially pertains to my work and interests with color and creating unusual spaces!
Placing Color Exhibition
ReplyDeleteInitial Response:
I don’t think this show could have come at a better time. The works in the gallery are speaking about issues in which I’m very interested at this point—they are held together in that they are about color, but they are also very much grounded in experience and place.
I was very taken by Carrie’s larger works. They reminded me of Barnet Newman’s color fields, but they are so much looser, less geometric, more fluid, and more lively in a way. While Newman’s extremely bright colors are almost jarring, Carrie’s colors are still bright, but more naturalistic and more intimate, more inviting. The other difference is that Carrie leaves evidence of her hand—she calls herself a “geometric colorist” and the works certainly are geometric, but not in the same rigid way that Newman’s paintings are. The way she’s putting canvases together also imparts a feeling of transition, of shifts in seeing, in experiencing the space. Carrie talked about the paintings as derived from experiences of the church St. Francis Xavier, primarily through the sections of colors that make up both the architectural space, but also the living space of people and the landscape outside that is seen through the windows. She described her process of mixing things up with prisms and using video footage as ways to get to these paintings. So while she’s interested in experience of place, it is not a rigidly observed place that replicates precisely what she is seeing from one viewpoint, but instead an experience that is connected to and transformed through memory, and also an awareness of others’ experiences in that space. This is really how we understand place—not just by being there in the present, but also by having been there in the past, by imagining ourselves there when we are not, and by dreaming of ourselves there in the future.
Kayla’s works interest me for the way they oscillate between representation and abstraction. I especially liked Kiwi and The Good Marriage because they are very harmonious and yet still dynamic. In Kiwi, she uses brushstrokes in varying ways across the canvas, making individual marks at some points and smooth, almost patina-like surfaces at others. Her canvases are built up—worked and reworked—there are layers upon layers of colors, which is apparent in the way colors come through from the inside of the works, but especially if you look at the side of the painting. I have only just started playing with layering colors and it was really interesting to try to take apart how she was layering colors and creating the surfaces she does. In some works these surfaces become spaces, allowing you in, in others you are shoved out, unable to enter, and in still others you slip out when you try to enter a space. They are like Cezanne’s paintings, only allowing us “in” to the representational space half-way. There is also a feeling of being blocked in several of them due to the way she’s using frames. This made me remember what Carrie said about a lot of my first paintings from the summer, which is that it was as though I was setting up compositions so that you want to enter and go far in, but you get blocked, hung up on something in the middle- or foreground of the canvas. While most of her color chords don’t draw me in and her paintings tend on the solid side, the compositions do create spaces in a way that intrigues me.
Brett Baker’s two bodies of works are less about translating an experience of place, so much as creating a new awareness of place in terms of color. His large-scale red panel that is close to the wall is like a giant Rothko, but rather than having a line on the floor that you cannot walk past, he pushes you close to the work. In this way it becomes like Serra’s Tilted Arcs, something that surrounds you, and directs you to interact with it, move through it. And you must move through it because the color is reflected all around you—onto the floor and the wall. In this way it is almost like a James Turrell light hallway. Color becomes a substance that you are in, it becomes the space, which is wonderful—an awakening experience. Baker’s smaller canvases are built-up layers of brushstrokes that have not been altered or smoothed out—just paint. They are so thick that my first reaction was “where is the canvas?!” He did them over the course of years. While I like the colors that he used and the principle of building a painting over time, the actual textured surfaces remind me of viscera, of body—they’re like entrails or vomit even (and oddly enough, like my paper discs from the very beginning of the year—I can see that now). So I suppose that while I like paint for it being painty, I don’t like it when it is totally uncontrolled. The colors draw me in and then once I see the colors, the texture doesn't give me a reason to stay there, it even pushes me away.
Overall I really enjoyed the show in terms of how these artists are translating experiences of place and creating new experiences for viewers and I've gone back to look a number of times. I am definately looking forward to the panel next week.
I really enjoyed Placing Color. I did not expect to become as engaged with the works as I did, and it was a pleasant and emotional surprise. I started my experience with the show by reading what was written about each artist and what each artist had to say about their work. I thought this would be a good idea since I am always looking to learn more about how to successfully communicate about my work.
ReplyDeleteCarrie Patterson’s works were described as “invented interiors that reflect the experience of inhabiting space.” Patterson stated that her hope was to create a “poetic physical translation of place.” Her description of process was fascinating and really gave me a key to personally unlocking the work. I was able to not only envision Patterson’s box with a prism in it, her looping footage of meditative spaces, and drawings of churches but feel them in the work. I found I was really able to get into the work and feel quiet spaces, solid walls, etc reflected back to me. Moreover, I was able to see Patterson’s experience of these factors and her personal and physical reflections of them in her paintings and sculptures. I feel that the juxtaposition of geometric shape, the rectangular forms, with the organic lines, colors, textures, and gradients mirrored the juxtaposition and process of sensing and inhabiting spaces which are architectural, solid, and cornered and reflecting back how the experiencing of inhabiting makes one feel: the building and the body, respectively. I think that Patterson’s description of her work was not only an effective use of language because it built a gateway into deeper appreciation and understanding of the work.
Kayla Mohammadi’s explanation of her work explained that she had influences beyond the typical suburban landscape which included Scandinavian, Islamic, and Persian backgrounds. She states that the paintings take her somewhere beyond what she already knows and that they come from landscape, still life, or interior spaces. Mohammadi’s use and placement of color are really what fulfill her explanations of her work. Maohammadi used color to create space. I was quick to look at the paintings, see spaces such as rooms, rivers, etc, and think: she painted a room, river, etc. However, as I spent more time with each painting I realized that Mohammadi didn’t paint a room, she placed colors purposefully to create the feeling of space. The different temperatures, textures, and treatments of color that Mohammadi employed really gave a sense of space, depth, and feeling. Each contained many spaces that I was able to form not only a knowledge of but opinions and feelings about because the colors she used were evocative of the different qualities and states of juxtapositions of light at boundaries.
Brett Baker’s description of his work states that is an interaction and reflection where human presence completes the work and that the works have a presence not unlike a portrait. Baker says that the work faces the viewer with presence and clarity alive in the insistent, evident, humanity of its construction. I found Baker’s statements about his work to be very thought provoking and true. When looking at Baker’s smaller works I found myself searching through the layers, trying to find ones that were deeper and deeper under layers of paint. Each mark of each color in every layer had character; each one had a different texture, each went in its own direction and was topographically different, each one’s color was differently affected by the colors around it. I was exploring through many different and individual facets that ultimately made a coherent whole which had its own personality, emotion, and presence. The works had a very intense and strong presence due to their thickness and layers of paint, the obvious time spent on them, and the fact that they say heavily on the wall with obvious form and dark color. The works’ presence caused me to become more present. This presence, personality, and layering caused me to think of the works, like Baker said, as portraits. I immediately thought of them as portraits of people, which each stroke of paint being a memory, trait, experience, etc. However, looking at the titles such as Hand and Axel made me think that maybe this type of portrait (with presence and layers that represent facets of identity) could be made for inanimate (or animate) objects like axels or hands. What then gives each work its humanity? Perhaps Baker himself.
Placing Color, what can I say other than intimate. After listening to the three artist, Brett Baker, Kayla Mohammadi, and Carrie Patterson brief description about their work, I came to understand why placing big blocks of color on a canvas was very important to them. Their work is about space, place and action of destination by which each painting requires a viewer’s eye to set them in motion and active their spatial significance.
ReplyDeleteI was equally surprised and moved by all three artists works. Kayla Mohammadi’s technique of painting and presenting these spaces as places is what caught my eye the most. She presents these spaces as transitional, they create depth almost like some sort of portal, where the viewer moves in and out. I was not astonished when she mentioned that she gets her inspiration and motif of this window like from Mattise, the enclosure and the opening.
Brett Baker’s work was amazing. The texture he managed to create with layers of paint, balanced color and mark making. It constructed this place exploring it as an interaction and reflection. His painting encourages a close, physical experience of color. The color extends laterally to such an extent that the viwer is completely immersed. In all of his painting, I found myself either questioning myself about what is under all that layering or I found myself intimidated that I did not want to look at the painting for too long because it invaded my personal space.
Carrie Patterson’s works moved me tremendously. I loved the fact that the movement she creates in her paintings is not in and out but rather side-by-side. When I was looking at the paintings I found my eye reading one section of paint before moving to the next one. I was struggling with balance as almost if the colors were in competition with one another. However, I also loved the fact that all these blocks of paint created an individual space that carries its own experience.
I really cannot wait for the panel to hear their own interpretation of their work.
Placing Color opens the gallery for me in a way that allows the three painters to show three maps of space, laid atop one another with an aesthetic balance that demands its own destination. The pieces for me play as landmarks to one another, leading slowly toward the saturated spaces identified by the artists through their work. There is not a narrative or rhythm for me, only varying degrees of evidence that the space in between our walls would be enlightened if it were appreciated in a manner that these artists have realized.
ReplyDeleteBrett Bakers work carries a special force that enters the room as if inside out. The density and pattern of the smaller works carries an obsessive element that feels risky at first. His choice of color projects cultural tradition, a lost cultural tradition, as if in the process of making these pieces he attempted to incorporate generations of ritualistic gestures. Their space is more temporal-- very close to being artifacts themselves. The large piece for me was a burden, a red cavity that felt too cliché—but spatially accomplished its goal.
Kayla Mohammadi’s work was for me the most fascinating. Maybe it was because I felt distinctly low to the ground in the space of her work, child size and eager to absorb. The windows in her work, the elements that divided the interior and exterior space, were as uninhibited as the worlds they exposed. There is a security and excitement as the cool forms casually introduce their warm counterparts.
Carrie’s work is so distilled that it left little for me to manage until I heard her process. Her interest in the architectural interior, as a control against which to experience light and space, for me correlates into the depthlessness of her work. The elaborate methods for which she translates her “perceptual experience” are filters for our experience of the spiritual space. I enjoy being left with so little, but I also felt that the larger pieces asked for too much of a comparison to the true space. As if they were “to scale”, the large pieces felt to me to be a potential alternative, or a refined way to see the space, instead of holding an intimate expression that the smaller pieces possessed.