k8n-poster-with-phone-and-hours

I contributed 12 acrylic on plywood paintings as my part of a group show at the K8N Gallery in September 2016. They are shaped like black silhouettes of a cube, but  become virtual cubes with the addition of just the slightest hint at the point that would be their interior apex. These hints are white letters and symbols made by pressing IBM typewriter balls into the dried black paint and filling the indentations with white paint.

The black paint looks very substantial, but it is not painterly. I sanded out any indications of brushwork or drips to eliminate that trope. I don’t doubt that someone will, or perhaps has, found a new role for painterliness, but in this case, it would make reading these works unnecessarily complicated. It is only necessary that the paint has a material presence that can compete with the virtual depth caused by the colour. Opposing tendencies are held in suspension, push-pull*, in and out, surface and image. For me, that delicate balance encourages an awareness of the perception itself, the seeing of a cube.

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*Push-pull is a term Hans Hofmann used to refer to colour dynamics, blue for instance tends to recede, and yellow tends to come forward. These factors need to be borne in mind when working with figure/ground relations.

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