Linda Francis, Interference, 2010
Mixed media on wood
24 x 24 inches

November 12 – 26, 2011

Artists: Clary Stolte, Don Voisine, Henriëtte van ‘t Hoog, José Heerkens, Kasarian Dane, Linda Francis, Mel Prest, Paul Pagk, Richard Schur.

A Romance of Many Dimensions is comprised of nine artists/painters who share at least two things: their work expands the idea of dimensionality past the exactitude of two and three- dimensional space, and, they have had all been interviewed by Brent Hallard. You can find the interviews posted online at Visual Discrepancies.

The title of the show comes from Edwin A. Abbott’s Flatland — A Romance of Many Dimensions, who dedicates the book…

To The Inhabitants of SPACE IN GENERAL And H. C. IN PARTICULAR This Work is Dedicated
By a Humble Native of Flatland
In the Hope that
Even as he was Initiated into the Mysteries
Of THREE Dimensions
Having been previously conversant
With ONLY TWO
So the Citizens of that Celestial Region
May aspire yet higher and higher
To the Secrets of FOUR FIVE OR EVEN SIX Dimensions
Thereby contributing
To the Enlargement of THE IMAGINATION
And the possible Development
Of that most rare and excellent Gift of MODESTY
Among the Superior Races
Of SOLID HUMANITY

What better sentiments come to mind than this to suggest the tenets of a reductive visual practice… the enlargement of the imagination, the development of that rare and excellent gift of modesty?

Like the novella, the paintings in “A Romance…” do not provide an axiom for the existence of higher dimensions into other worlds. That’s something a mathematician or physicist might be able to do better. Rather, the works in this exhibition attend to the flat — surfaces, shapes and color — as if in defiance of the existence of the dimensional world that they inhabit.

The experience of a painting, noting that the term painting here can be applied rather loosely, is primarily phenomenological. Yet just as a line or shape can suggest an aspect of the recognizable as a response to the world around us, shapes also go on to form recognizable things, and, as such link the three-dimensional experience of supports and canvases as they protrude from the wall.

While early abstraction had its interest in non-Euclidian geometry, the fourth dimension and the idea of time and motion as a perceived illusion, artists such Mondrian and Malevich clearly worked with the phenomenal world that they were in. Their mature paintings generally had a top and a bottom, not of sky and sea, but in correspondence to the way the body responds to the environment. And if some of this early experimentation appears to be gravity free, on closer inspection it becomes clear that a bodily response to gravity is there expressed through a modesty of means.

The artists in the show all work with visual dialects, understanding that line is connected to form, that object is connected to color and line, that our participation informs and blends all this, and the relationships formed hereafter are very much about our connectivity, be-coming aware of another sensual realm that may have no physical location. It is here that the artist romances, bringing together relationships, for the viewer to experience and wonder about.

A Romance of Many Dimensions is curated by Brent Hallard.

ABOUT BROOKLYN ARTISTS GYM
BAG is gallery and artists’ studio facility in the Park Slope/Gowanus area of Brooklyn, NY. BAG’s mission is to help make it possible for artists to further their work and careers at a reasonable cost. Started five years ago, BAG also offers classes, critiques, figure drawing, library, wifi, kitchenette and all studio facilities.

Installation view

October 4 – October 29, 2011

Curated by Mariangeles Soto-Diaz

Featuring works by Melanie Crader, Matthew Deleget, Anoka Faruqee, Michelle Grabner, Brent Hallard, John Hawke, Gilbert Hsiao, Pablo Manga, Thomas Martin, Leah Raintree, Claudia Sbrissa, Karen Schifano, Karen Schiff, Jessica Snow, Mariángeles Soto-Díaz, Robert Strati, Ann Tarantino.

Gifting Abstraction establishes an intimate economy within Soho20Chelsea gallery in which abstract objects have not yet turned into objectified commodities. The gift economy paradigm recognizes that there is value outside market forces, and that the gift renders forces and riches of its own. One of the perplexing aspects of the gift is that while its effect cannot be quantified, its intention is generally palpable: at its best, the gift generates a sense of interconnectedness. In this exhibition, artists’ labor stretches beyond the works themselves, as connective lines are symbolically rendered through the gifting process onto a relational dimension.

Gifting Abstraction questions the idea that abstract works are inextricably bound to the marketplace and therefore to a larger discourse of individualism. Abstraction has been construed as standing in direct opposition to the “relational aesthetics” theorized by Nicolas Bourriaud: “It seems more pressing to invent possible relations with our neighbors in the present than to bet on happier tomorrows.” Bourriaud implicitly pits object-based art practices such as abstract painting – which he associates with the notion of (failed) utopias – against what he calls “microtopia,” a provisional, DIY, relational approach to art.

Installation view

September 10 – October 15, 2011

Participating Artists:
Clary Stolte, Richard van der Aa, René van den Bos, Iemke van Dijk, Brent Hallard, Henriëtte van ‘t Hoog, Dirk Jan Jager, Peter Luining, Els Moes, Jan van der Ploeg, Machiel van Soest, John Tallman, Tilman, Vosenvanderveen, Jan Maarten Voskuil, Guido Winkler

Installation view

February 14 – April 5, 2011

Artists include: Pam Aitken (au) Christoph Dahlhausen (de) Caroline de Lannoy (be/uk) Matthew Deleget (us) Daniel Göttin (ch) Billy Gruner (au) Brent Hallard (jp/us) Clemens Hollerer (a) Andrew Huston (us) Sarah Keighery (au) Roland Orépük (fr) Charles Payan (fr) Jacek Przybyszewski (pl/fr) Paul Raguenes (fr) Giles Ryder (au) Sato Satoru (jp/fr) Karen Schifano (us) Bogumila Stroja (pl/fr) Tilman (de) Richard van der Aa (nz/fr) Jan van der Ploeg (nl) Henriëtte van ’t Hoog (nl) Guido Winkler (nl)

Don Voisine, Tricoteuse, 2010
Oil on wood
17 x 18 inches

January 6 – February 12, 2011

This is the fourth January group exhibition in a series focusing on aspects of abstraction. In this instance, it is an examination of the use of planarity in painting, sculpture, and photography. Work in the exhibition ranges from deceptively simple, geometric work that consciously embraces the flatness of the picture plane, to those using complex interactions of planar forms to construct the illusion of depth, volume, and movement.

Kim MacConnel’s exuberantly colored enamel paintings use simple diamond, ovoid, and rectangular forms to create a joyful internal cadence. Joanne Mattera creates reductive yet richly colored and textured near-monochromes built up of layers of encaustic, and Steven Alexander layers colors into textured fields activated with centralized, multi-colored rectangular shapes, echoing the planar field of the painting. Don Voisine, Karen Schifano, and Brent Hallard all employ a reductive palette and strong rectilinear forms in taut and precise compositions that reference architecture but also set up internal rhythms of alternating geometries and shifting spatial depth.

The industrially inspired, complex painting of Dannielle Tegeder, with planar forms set at oblique angles, uses the interaction of planar elements to impart a sensation of deep space. Reed Danziger’s work employs prismatic volumes intersecting with both linear and biomorphic forms to suggest movement within an abstract landscape. Sara Eichner’s planar grids of intersecting hexagonal fields simultaneously impart a sense of movement and the suggestion of infinite space. Ion Zupcu uses multiple exposures in his black-and-white photographs of simply painted cubes to build up dimensional illusion, generating planar layers that seem to pulsate.

The exploration of depth is continued into the spatial realm. Don Christensen’s wall-mounted sculpture of found furniture painted with geometric shapes playfully pushes the flatness of painting into three-dimensions. Heather Hutchison creates simple forms from bent acrylic sheets articulated with crisp bands of color to achieve a similar end through more reductive means, while exploiting the translucency of the material to elegant effect. Tilman’s large floor sculpture, constructed from layered, tilting stacks of monochromatically painted board, gives the impression of a painting that has been taken apart or perhaps in the process of being assembled.

December 3, 2010 – January 15, 2011

Informal Relations: Contemporary works on paper curator Scott Grow selected 32 artists from the United States, Germany, Spain and Japan to focus on the diversity of practices within painting and abstraction today.

The exhibition’s title refers to kind the “informal relations” artists have with one another, their predecessors, with the modernist tradition, the future, and even with their own work. While works on paper may stand as finished works, they are also often places for exploration, thinking, planning, taking chances, and failure.

The show explores the challenges of abstract art. Since it typically refuses expected representation, language and absolute interpretation, it requires the viewer’s engagement and participation. Abstraction is not a singular school or style, the term itself is not necessarily helpful in identifying the qualities or concepts of the art object. Abstract artists often have shared and conflicting objectives for the art they make.

In response to these challenges with their genre of art, each artist in Informal Relations presents a definition of abstract painting. The exhibition explores the similarities, differences, and connections between these artists, their dialog with abstraction’s history, and various directions forward for abstraction.

Participating artists include: Patrick Alt, Chris Ashley, Patrick Berran, Kadar Brock, Matthew Deleget, Laura Fayer, Keltie Ferris, Patrick Michael Fitzgerald, Connie Goldman, Brent Hallard, Rachel Hayes, Jeffrey Cortland Jones, Michael Just, Matthew Langley, Jim Lee, Rossana Martinez, Rob Nadeau, Melissa Oresky, Paul Pagk, Danielle Riede, Maximilian Rödel, Eric Sall, Susan Scott, Gabriel J. Shuldiner, Jessica Snow, Henning Straßburger, Garth Weiser, Wendy White, Paige Williams, Douglas Witmer, Molly Zuckerman-Hartung and John Zurier.

October 28 – December 11, 2010

Pelavin Gallery is proud to announce a solo exhibition of recent work by american artist, Kate Beck. this show will include large scale poured oil paintings and graphite drawings on aluminum panel. this will be Beck’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, and in New York city.

In this new body of work, Beck continues her engagement with repetitive tonal rendering as a means of interaction between light and shadow, human thought and consciousness, and the dynamic architectonics of space. this time she takes the essence of form further by using aluminum substrates, allowing modulating marks of graphite and poured oil to accumulate and shift amidst the confines of the geometric shapes. tension oscillates between formalistic geom- etry and existential space; an allusion to thought and consciousness, and the passage of time.

Critic Philip Isaacson writes: “…Beck’s work ultimately achieves moments so insistently animated that each succeeding viewing becomes an initiation… one of those sought-after moments in art, a moment of vision, here… which allowed the artist to reach beyond aesthetics to a consideration of movement in perpetual opposition to structure. Beck’s lines and the spaces between them are never at rest. They resonate in perpetuity…” coalesced of intensity, intimacy and silence through muted color cadences and detailed surfaces, the new works at Pelavin Gallery are evidenced within Beck’s signature palette of black, white and grey.

“… I am involved in the visual and philosophical pursuit of exploring the architectonics of space. I create works that result from a systematic starting point of materials and geometric shape. My life work, however, reflects a persistent inquiry into the nature of the world around me, and my role within this world. I create work because it is my habitual form of personal expression.”

Born in Maine in 1956, Beck has studied art and writing at the University of Maine at Orono, Bennington College, Goddard College and the Maine College of Art. She has been the focus of numerous articles and interviews, including Drawing Lines, by Brent Hallard, Tokyo, Japan, 2009, and Writings on Art by Fiona Robinson, London, UK, 2010. She is a contributing essayist on contemporary art and culture at The Drawing Research Network, Loughborough University School of Art & Design, Leicestershire, UK and publishes a blog, KATE BECK :: ART NOTES. Her essay, Brooks Run to the Ocean: The Paintings of Steven Alexander, was published in 2010 by Gremillion and Co. Fine Art, Houston, TX.

Installation view

thru October 23, 2010

“I’ve chosen artists’ work that I feel share something of a fetish with/in the production/object, particularly based on an aesthetic predisposition that can run formally, culturally, adding the social/personal. How I personally interpret this is with a Tokyo sensibility, how Japanese respond to objects and their placement, their positioned sense of worth, a cuteness, an austere vs. touch. The exhibition consists of individual pieces, multiples, or artists books, which may sit on the wall, or on shelves within the grid, mixing up the idea of ‘art object’, ‘art multiple’, and/or simply as a ‘monogram’ [a copy record of the art/practice] to bring together a whole presentation, inviting communication and contact. And that, in a nutshell, is touch.” –Brent Hallard, Oct. 2010

These things that may sit on the wall, on a table, draw attention not only unto themselves but also in proximity, of ideas, of soothers and disquietude: two grids on tangential walls, another formed by a mass of white, tabletops bunched together, anticipate a social meeting of sorts, like-minded, or in location disparity, objects intertwine ideas, engage an audience that may lead them, us, to a precipice of the inexorable… a spree, a want, desire, an enchanted moment with what is there, a champagne bubble, a twist of color, an abstract motif turned clock tower, some things something suggested… other times not… shiny surfaces, bars of color, dingle dangles that pull on the psychological purse, strings… these but a few of my favorite things… Touch is a meeting place, not always bound by the physical, though often unleashed via the temporal… a get-together, a conversation, where we can touch.

Participating Artists:
Shinsuke Aso, Kasarian Dane, Brent Hallard, Lynne Harlow, Henriëtte van ‘t Hoog, IS projects, Linn Meyers, Mel Prest, Karen Schifano, Jessica Snow, Clary Stolte, Hadi Tabatabai, Cecilia Vissers, Don Voisine, Nancy White, Patricia Zarate

Works from the 25 – 25 IS (2010) on the floor at SNO
(l to r, t to b) Tilman, Tallman, Heerkens, Hallard, Hsiao,
Arts, Voskuil, Winkler, Andrews, Roux, Dahlhausen,
Van Der Graaf, Deleget, Van Der Aa

August 7-29, 2010

Solo Installations
Guido Winkler & Iemke van Dijk

25 -25 IS Box
The 25 – 25 IS box contains work of 25 artists at 25 x25 cm. The edition consists of 75 boxes. Available at 395 EUR / 575 AUD. Participating artists include: Justin Andrews, Linda Arts, Chris Ashley, Sanne Bruggink, Christoph Dahlhausen, Matthew Deleget, Rene Eicke, Billy Gruner, Brent Hallard, Jose Heerkens, Gilbert Hsiao, Arjan Janssen, Sarah Keighery, Alexandra Roozen, Leopoldine Roux, Giles Ryder, Clary Stolte, John Tallman, Tilman, Richard Van Der Aa, Iemke Van Dijk, Jasper Van Der Graaf, Henriette Van ‘t Hoog, Jan Maarten Voskuil and Guido Winkler.

IS Group Show
Participating artists include: Jose Heerkens, Henriette van ‘t Hoog, Arjan Janssen, Jasper van der Graaf and Jan Maartin Voskuil

Clary Stolte, CS_008 MODEL 003 overview, 2006
Galerie van den Berge, Goes, the Netherlands

Brent: At some level an artwork needs to quench the desire – the need to know what something is. But also, it shouldn’t stop there. In your case what is ‘known’ is a shape. You generally use the square and it is often imbued with the hues around white. Robert Ryman used a square because it took away the need to make what he thought were arbitrary decisions. In your case I’m not exactly sure why you chose this shape, but it works. I consider the shape as a container, or a surface, a plate that you serve things on. Left bare it goes back the other way: is a plate, a surface, and an empty container. But always there is something there.

In this ‘presence’ I am also aware of something that is very portable, an ornament almost. You can arrange this in any number of ways. It can be put away and brought back out, and ‘re-presented’. Then as shape, surface, container, and ornament all this starts to perform something like a gift. And how this gift is presented seems very much important. Now we move through into ritual.

Clary: When looking at my work I am often told that the observer is searching for some kind of support, looking for a ‘known’, looking for a way to ‘enter’. The eye tries to focus on something though may not know where to start.

“VOLUMESURFACE #2” (2004), is a square; a semi-transparent work made out of folded paper. There is not much there to lead you in; even the edges are hard to focus on.

To really understand why I use the square as a shape and white as a color, I have to take you back a bit in time to the moment I came to the decision to start working with these elements. The square and the color ‘white’ was used by artists from the early 60’s and 70’s, such as the American artist Robert Ryman, and the Dutch painter Jan Schoonhoven. My work is most placed in this tradition, and that of minimal art. But maybe when I explain a little further about my way of using these elements it will become clearer that my work also has other contexts in art history…

Brent: While artist-in-residence in the most western point of Ireland, Achill Island, you tapped in a description of the landscape: Dramatic, With Cliffs, An Ocean, And Totally Isolated.

This is your work: my first impression.

There is Nature in your pieces. And it took a tough wind and a heavy sea to set this all in motion.

I see firm – more than firm, hard. Hard material that has cuts, often just a few. The cuts themselves appear powerful. They can cut into a shape. Another piece they cut to form the shape. And if anyone were to ask me about the lightness of your work, I would reply ‘Weight!’

Cecilia: I am glad you brought up the residency in Ireland. The Achill Heinrich Boll Foundation operates the residency and it is a great opportunity to explore this particularly isolated peninsula.

As noted, Achill represents the most western point of Ireland. It signifies the ‘extreme edge’ of the land. You cannot physically go further.

I would walk over the high cliffs and see the ocean there below, and could do so without distractions: There were only the sea and the waves, the wind and the lines.

In 2008 I visited Canna, a similar island. Canna is part of The Hebrides, located off of the western coast of Scotland. Only 15 people live there. And it is filled with nothing: There are no roads – traffic, shops, or computer. The only payphone you could find was in the little white cottage from which you could view the sea from every window. These are the places that impress me most. They allow a focus on the rhythm of the landscape. And this gives me time to find the repetition. The tougher the wind, the higher the wave, the more I like it.

In front of a work you are likely to focus on color, line and form. Maybe there is a sense of weight. I want to transfer this sense to the viewer. It’s kind of an abstract value until you actually lift the work.

The sculptures are flat and executed in thick (8-15mm) plates of metal. While they appear light (like graphic signs or forms), they are actually very heavy. The challenging features of the material are the power and strength of the metal. This is what I like to work with.

I use the saw-cuts to interfere/delineate the square form or circle. The placing/location of the cut is crucial and is a very clear and radical decision: once performed in steel it is irreversible. If it is 1 or 2mm to the left or right the whole work can change, shift. The balance and composition has to be just right. I admire the work of Ad Dekkers (NL) and Gordon Matta Clark (US), construction and de-construction are important features of both their work, however they interpret it…

Richard Bottwin, Facade #5, 2009
Wood, Acrylic Paint, Textured Acrylic Sheet
15 x 15 x 4.5 inches

“Brent: As a sculptor you work fairly pure, neither adorning pieces with mounts nor placing your presentations on pedestals. If a “work” sits on the floor and only grows to somewhere around or below the knees, well, that is where it sits.

You suspend. In this case the body becomes very aware of its own mechanisms; how it values weight, position; how this operates within the sense of the temporal.

Smaller scale: The eye moves in and latches onto visual sensations that convince, though also deceive. And while no guesswork is needed to place the vocation in the realm of the sculptural there is a question to whether the form adds more, or if there is more to what there is?

Richard: My very early freestanding sculptures, although stable, looked like they were always about to fall over. Now I strive to make it very difficult to get a vertical fix on what you’re looking at. Walk around them and any expectations you had during your first scan will be subverted. Some recent pieces create a slight sense of anxiety in my gut when I look at them. Not a panic response exactly, more fun than that. Confronting a human-scaled construction that is standing on the floor, does engage the body of the viewer as you suggest. In contrast to this, I have found that the import of gravity is not such a big deal in small, pedestal size pieces. Maybe that’s why I moved them to the wall and used them to explore other issues long ago.

I’ve always been suspect of the conventional “modern art” solutions to gravity; Sculpture on a pad, sculpture on a stick, sculpture on a hidden pad (underground) and sculpture hanging on a wire doesn’t interest me. I like things to stand alone, solidly on the ground without artifice. Recently, I’ve been very conscious of wanting the things to stand in a thoroughly inevitable way, like junk casually left on a construction site. This allows the environment to intrude upon the sculpture and the sculpture to engage the environment.

The environment may be the “More” in your question. I’d like to have several sculptures in an installation working together, or, a single built environment one can enter that remove the viewer from this reality. I’ve always been moving toward architecture and have brushed up against it a few times. I feel like I’m collecting information to eventually build a pavilion or a “house” of some sort again as I did a few times in the past.

One vice I have is a passion for the decorative. For a brief period, around 20 years ago, I threw 22k gold leaf on my sculptures and sometimes glazed it with color. I learned a lot about pigments and transparency that way and then got over it. Now, I employ that love of decorative surface to create allusions to functionality. Veneers make the sculptures look like furniture and that confuses expectations. Figuration in a veneer also initiates visual activity that I can play with in the form of the sculpture…”

“Brent: In “Treble II” you have an envelope-proportioned structure that has a fold but not like an envelope. There is a corner missing from one side: And a corner protruding from the other. The whole thing is one sheet of color, and of two forms… how did that come about?

Connie: In the “Treble” pieces I’m working with parts of a whole, hence the single color. As to whether these parts become a single entity or are in the process of individuation, well… it can go either way. That’s the point – the uncertainty.

Transformation, the presence, and a stimulus are all part of the move. There is always a “present”: And there is in every piece a “movement” just as there is a pull to and away from gravity. I work a disturbed equilibrium. And it’s there where I find the accord.

I’ve worked off the square/rectangle shape for years. This four-cornered parallelogram is static, constant, perfectly composed. But I take that parallelogram and cut into it, knock it off balance. I have it strive toward another less stable shape and then strive back for perfect containment. The shape wants to stay intact, but countervailing forces are always eroding and pulling at its perfect equanimity. The differing depths of the components in the piece are intended to enhance the notion that this is a changeable, morphing form…”

Don Voisine, Chemical Moment, 2009
Oil on wood, 16×17 inches

“Brent: Upon entering the gallery, your first show on the West Coast, San Francisco, Gregory Lind, immediately you become aware of all that is color. Oddly it is not the black that pushes its presence first. But like a good friend, faithful, the blacks unfold at a different speed, which require the intimate. If dark be the turbine then color is the outwardly expressive, and is the meter. In the exhibition space this is what travels across to us in calibrated splendor.

Don: Your response sounds similar to the reaction people have when coming to my studio for the first time. Having seen a painting or two in various group shows they would expect the studio to be a dark and perhaps foreboding place. Often the first words uttered are, “Wow, look at all this color!” I think this explains why salon style installations of my work have been done in a few exhibitions. It replicates the experience of seeing the work in the studio…”

Work by Brent Hallard

November 12 – December 19, 2009

An international, visual conversation between abstract painters; a traveling, transformable series of shows.

Exhibiting artists – Kasarian Dane, Stephan Fritsch, Brent Hallard, Leonhard Hurzlmeier, Robin McDonnell, Mel Prest, Richard Schur, Nancy White, John Zurier

Meridian Gallery is pleased to present TRANS: form | color the San Francisco manifestation of a series of international traveling shows by nine artists from Japan, Germany and the United States who are engaged in a dialogue about Painting and Abstraction.

Begun as an in-person and online conversation between Richard Schur in Munich, Mel Prest in San Francisco and Brent Hallard in Tokyo, TRANS has grown into an exhibition with nine artists. Three of the artists hail from Germany, four artists live and work in the San Francisco Bay Area, one in upstate New York and one lives and works in Tokyo, Japan. Working both internationally and in a variety of approaches to Abstraction, the artists have created this show as a visual dialogue between themselves and as a means to join today’s contemporary painting dialogue.

The show poses questions of cultural/aesthetic difference, as well as, the ways that the works align both formally and conceptually, with a range of abstraction spanning hard-edge, optical, minimal, expressive and conceptual. An aspect of the artists’ continuing dialogue is the installation of TRANS: form | color, which is done onsite by the artists together. This convergence of approach and locale creates a dynamic and timely exhibition.

Each of the artists work with optically engaging abstraction whose roots lie in different twentieth century trajectories, yet the work is very much of the twenty first century, with its awareness of history as well as conceptual concerns and aesthetics of contemporary painting.

“…These painters, calling themselves TRANS, meeting in person or on the Internet, found that they share a common interest in the painting process, pure, and often not so simple. Unlike previous groups, they share no common ideology and they certainly are not likely to publish a manifesto. And they all agree that it is the viewer’s response, which completes the work…”
—Peter Selz

TRANS:Abstraktion opened in November 2007 at Weltraum, a non-profit gallery space in Munich, Germany. In March 2009 TRANS:formal traveled to Pharmaka, a non-profit space in Los Angeles. Each show includes new work by each artist –thus keeping a fresh and ongoing dialogue. TRANS: form | color at Meridian Gallery will be the first time all artists will be present at the exhibition.

Catalogue available, with notes on TRANS: form | color by Peter Selz.

Installation view at Non Objectif Sud, France, 2009

Brent: A drawing dated 1978, Untitled, chalk on paper, has a pair of identical penciled or conté grids which you use to make a series of what appear to be perfect arcs; there are finger marks or smudges; some arcs are taken out. The arcs appear to form some shape, allude to volume, but never really do. What I see is a point where you stopped. Was that because you felt the image had reached a stage whereby via the residue the movement just kept going on all by itself? I sense the building of form and then the letting go, engaging in a perfect slip, of folding in and out, in pairs, a synchronizing of different stages.

In Dark Nebula in Saggitarius, 1979, the marks have a similar feel in touch, and there appears to be some pairing, folding, and twisting. Though any geometric sub-structural hint is well hidden under what lay on top. I have an image of this as the remnants of a bout.

Linda: That was a smaller try of a group of large (approx 4×7′ or larger depending upon the space) drawings I made on the wall. The grid was ruled in with pencil and made a rectangular pattern. Each part of the symmetrical grid was drawn upon with chalk using simple rules: only quarter arcs, straight lines, changing the movement at a crossing, etc. They were freehand and each section done with each hand. That is to say, the right grid drawn on with the right hand and the left with left. I just started in the middle and drew out and then came back. I not quite erased what went before to push it into the background and then did it again, responding to the first drawing. I thought of it as re-seeing in time that could have gone on forever. I guess I stopped when I thought the movement was over. Kind of with a long exhale very much as you describe.

I went from the analytical gesture to some years of drawings in which I used the chalk and eraser to literally remake various spiral galaxies. I was looking at small photos in the Hubble Atlas of Galaxies. The epiphany was that these galaxies were the analog of the gestures in the earlier work, and of course by extension the body and brain alike were similarly organized natural phenomena. Drawing for me was a kind of research. Looking at those small pictures united my hand and mind as I tried to find the structure that was simultaneously building and destroying the form. This info was not commonly available as it is now and the few books that existed like Mandelbrot’s first and Pirogene’s were the only references I had to try to find out more of what I intuited to be true. In 1982 I did an exhibition of big drawings in Copenhagen. The show was titled The Order of Chaos and here is a picture of one of them done from the galaxy M101…

Brent: Finding. You come out of a bit of a painting history; gesture; hints of constructive; a kind of record keeping; painting that pays attention to relationship more than heroics, though the mark and scale suggests that’s where you were initially coming from?

Richard: Yes, I do feel that what I do comes out of, and actually continues within, a history of painting. I trained as a painter initially during the early 80s in Christchurch, NZ and my teachers were predominantly abstract expressionists who were extolling the virtues of the New York school and the theories of Clement Greenberg (20 years after the fact.) Being young and impressionable, I came out loving that stuff and have been working my way out of there ever since. Even now, I feel that what ever I do is inflected by a way of thinking about painting which I took on board way back then. In brief it is about: The painting as evidence of process and most importantly for me, the painting as an object. When you say record keeping you are bang on. Perhaps it is more obvious in my earlier work, but I would say even now – I think of the artwork as a kind of physical residue of a physical activity that has taken place. I don’t try to hide the evidence of an artist at work – touch is important to me.

You do well to speak of it being about scale/relationship more than heroics. I had dreams of being the next Franz Kline or Motherwell or de Kooning – a big gestural guy – but soon found that I had a tendency to want to structure things more and tidy them up, to some extent. So I veered towards the Rothko and Newman side of the NY school, and with a touch of Mondrian thrown in, my work became much more about simplicity, solidity, scale and proportion than the grand gesture. I think that to this day relationship is key to everything I do. In fact that word could well summarise it all…

Brent: You have a penchant for travel, often for the more exotic places on this globe. You return home, go to the studio, and take out your notes… what are these notes?

Mel: I like to be completely immersed while I’m traveling—so this means not putting a frame/ lens/ color on paper between the experience and myself. Sometimes I take little snapshots with my phone, or quickly record video of small moments with my cheap camera. On this trip to Senegal I have three little videos I am happy with: one is walking on the road in a village by the welder’s stand. The welder likes to listen to Islamic music and blasts it on an old speaker (music and tools powered by a generator). So we are approaching this stand, walking behind our grandmother and a taxi is approaching from behind, sounding a sort of funny custom horn. It’s these strange moments, when layers of unrelated things that occur spontaneously, that characterize travel for me. I have no idea what will happen with these captured moments once I return…

“Brent: Pop, peek-a-boo, poking around, of color that is not of this world, though worldly set in architectural places that can eat up the logic of their interior. Indeed you have for lunch many of the preconceptions of the formal. Your sense of order of space and how you color it physical is full of humor often playing up to our own inquisitiveness, how we are likely to navigate – how we and our body often lurch into understanding looking for an easy registration, and what happens when this is not possible.

Henriette: Well, I have been poking around for a while hoping to make people aware of color and shape, and of non-existing space. In Joint I transformed a little area into something new and unexpected, joking around with color and shape while not knowing where it would lead – just having fun, and working through ways that would perhaps mislead the audience. I always trust myself to find the next step in the direction I am going, but this is also scary, I can tell you. But usually the work I’ve just completed hints to what is going to happen next, even if I’m not totally aware of it.

I like the idea of making something that nobody has seen before. Although I am aware that everything has been done already, it doesn’t matter. I am also aware that I’m working in a tradition, but that doesn’t matter either. Actually I think it’s a strength knowing that I am working in a tradition. There is a chance to break all the unspoken rules. And then you find out that what you have to do is invent new ones, your own rules, otherwise the work doesn’t work. And this is odd, and interesting, and matters…”

The word “inspire” (originally meaning “to infuse with breath”) is a verb, but can also transform itself into a noun or adjective. It’s very active, and yet also implies being receptive, even demands openness, a readiness to receive, and a sharpening of perception and awareness. From one thing, there is a direct connection to another thing, a kind of touch that is nurturing, rich and full of promise. Potential becomes realization; we wake up rejuvenated, re-energized, and ready for action.

This group of inspirational flotsam and jetsam from our homes and studios is incredibly varied, running the gamut from a poetic quote to the restoration of a house, from the image of a computer desktop to strips of colored tape on a wall. In some instances, there’s a surprising leap from the image seen here to the finished work, in others there is a clear and recognizable relationship. I hope that as you are intrigued by an image, you will click on it to reveal the caption or thoughts of the artist, and then go to the individual websites linked to each name. Through a dialogue about how the mysterious process of getting from A to B or even Z unfolds for each of us, new avenues of search can open up, and we can be re-inspired by this “Inspiration Information*”.

* by Shuggie Otis

Participating Artists (left to right, row by row):

Stephen Maine | Richard Bottwin | Paul Corio | Joanne Mattera

Kevin Finklea | Billy Gruner & Sarah Keighery | Linda Arts | Erik Saxon

Henry Brown | Rory MacArthur | Melanie Crader | Matthew Deleget

Daniel Argyle | Li-Trincere | Chris Ashley | Linda Francis

Sylan Lionni | Shinsuke Aso | Douglas Melini | Brent Hallard

Lynne Harlow | Guido Winkler | Michael Zahn | Karen Schifano

Lynne Eastaway | Daniel Göttin | Simon Ingram | Daniel Feingold

VIEWLIST is our online project space where we invite artists and others to curate a visual essay of images. VIEWLIST exhibitions are experimental and usually thematic, and can include art works spanning various time periods, movements, and geographic locations. Exhibitions may also include ideas and images from disciplines outside of the visual arts. With VIEWLIST, we’ve created a venue that focuses exclusively on ideas, a kind of idealized curatorial space, where exhibition budgets, loans and acquisitions of art works, timelines, and all other logistics are set aside.