Care has been given to the preparation of each canvas, giving the gesso a compositional presence. The application of paint in lines, patches and rectangles bring to mind the incidental markings that are often visible on the walls of urban buildings and passageways. The presence of grids and simple color gradients further recalls the built environment. In this series, the painting’s ground can be interpreted as a metaphor for the base—the fabric of material relations upon which economic value is created. In their spare, non-representational poetics, the paintings weigh the possibility of what the sociologist Herbert Marcuse described as a “double reality,” where refusal is possible, established language and images fail, and form holds the contradictions that point toward psychological or social transformation. By calling the eye toward the canvas, the artworks consider the competing pressures that are contained in an object’s surface.
Jack Hanley Gallery
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