A Protean Bargain: The Artwork of Joshua Marsh

This post is presented on the occasion of the exhibition “In Your Arms I’m Radiant: Chie Fueki and Joshua Marsh” at the Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Los Angeles. This is the gallery’s third and final of a series of exhibitions titled “In Your Arms I’m Radiant” featuring the work of artist couples. The show runs from March 4 though April 15, 2023.

It is easy to be overwhelmed by Joshua Marsh’s sixteen drawings and nine paintings on exhibit at the Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Los Angeles. That is because within each of these artworks one encounters a significant profusion of what I would characterize as “visual moments.” The multiplier effect is significant. Thus the considerable challenge I face trying to shepherd this abundant and wide-ranging imagery toward some overarching narrative that might reveal, if I’m really on my game, a modified theory of everything.

But, as it turns out, there is a overarching narrative on offer, at least a through line and a very intriguing one at that. I think it is fair to say that these drawings and paintings, as evoked by the titles, are in playful dialog with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s classic two-part tragedy, Faust. Briefly, Faust, and avid seeker of knowledge, is lured by Mephistopheles to accept his assistance on earth for the potential price of serving him in hell if and when Faust should fail in his wager: From Goethe’s pen:

If ever to the moment I shall say:
Beautiful moment, do not pass away!
Then you may forge your chains to bind me,
Then let them hear my death-knell toll,
Then from your labors you'll be free,
The clock may stop, the clock-hands fall,
And time come to an end for me!

(Translation by David Luke, Oxford University Press, 1987)

Certainly the Faust tragedy proves an indispensable trail guide to navigate and to better fathom these drawings and paintings. However, my focus is less directed on the “what” of these artworks and more on the “how.” I am betting that the key to a better grasp of these enigmatic works and of what makes them so enthralling lies in appreciating the demands they place on our perception. More crucially, I want to examine how these ensembles of images unfold and transform before the viewer. My reason for describing the constituent figures and forms as “image moments” is to redirect their status as static “objects” toward their critical role as stages on our pathways of discovery. My aim is to show how these artworks mobilize our attention to wind its way from here to there while fabricating provisional coherences on the fly.

To engage deeply with these artworks is to entertain any number of transformations taking place. To be clear, I am not suggesting that any particular visual element literally transforms into something else before your eyes—not exactly a metamorphosis. When you see that pipe in Earth Spirit (Frosty), it stays looking like a pipe long after you’ve moved on. Rather, the transformations I am evoking are precipitated by the viewers’ interactions as they perceive their way among the dense arrays of objects, bodies, places, and spaces. Obviously the specific images are static, but to the roving eye of the viewer, their interrelationships are ceaselessly reconfigured.

As my central focus is on transformations, it is instructive to point out that the original Johann Georg Faust of the German legend was supposedly an “itinerant alchemist,” a seeker of material transformations of base matter into gold. As well, Goethe’s tale fully launches with the transformation of, of all things, a stray poodle into Mephistopheles!

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Something About Focus

The transformative qualities of Marsh’s artworks are enabled in part by the their formal dispositions and, more specifically, by the the inventive ways they manage our focus. Mostly this takes place through the deft manipulation of the edges of the forms along with their dark/light contrasts. These qualities are critical in determining how much each object or zone is distinguished from the others and indispensable to our ability to navigate these highly complex and spatially ambiguous scenes.

Joshua Marsh | Peneus | 2023 | Graphite on Paper |  7” x 5.4” | Courtesy of the artist and Shoshana Wayne Gallery

I will turn now to just one his drawings to illustrate what I mean. However, before proceeding, I need to confess my overwhelming temptation to insert the word “seeming” before almost everything I am about to describe. It is hard to avoid, as the infusion of so much “seemingness” is a critical feature of the Marshian universe. Looking at Peneus I behold what seems to be a landscape loosely framed by a line of boulders strung out along the periphery of the lower half; they function here like an upside down proscenium directing my attention toward a much deeper space beyond. Most of these gently rounded forms lie on the “sharper” end of the “edge spectrum” which, along with their notable dark/light contrast, renders them as discrete objects relative to the rest of the scene.

Looking past the boulders, I behold a sylvan scene resplendent with varied vegetation, perhaps a winding stream and waterfall, and, to my eye, a whole lot of “stuff” that is largely indeterminable—neither this nor that, yet on the verge of something I should recognize. Subtly nested among all this, I think I see standing figures in a couple places and perhaps even a dark skull resting on what might or might not be one of the boulders? I can only assume that I have skipped over yet other “image moments” embedded somewhere along my saccadic path. My powers of perception are sorely tested before such an exceptionally dense and crowded scene. The combined effect of so many spongy, diaphanous borders along with minimal focal hierarchy frees my gaze to enter at any number of locations and, once in, free to roam about. Moreover, my eye rarely alights for long on any single item, as one form seems to effortlessly transition into another. And not only the forms and objects slipping and sliding into each other, but the pictorial space itself is similarly ambiguous. Rather than a unified, enveloping container, I meander through a warren of shifting pockets of space, often indistinguishable from the objects they putatively contain. No matter how hard I try to lock down any specific “pocket” it manages, like the mythical Proteus, to elude my grasp. Everything about this scene just acts differently than conventional landscapes. Rather than affording a single, coalescing gestalt, it offers instead a theater of perceptual transformations.

Joshua Marsh | Earth Spirit (Frosty) | 2022 | Acrylic on Canvas Over Panel |  22” x 17” | Courtesy of the artist and Shoshana Wayne Gallery

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At this juncture I want to acknowledge other important facets of Marsh’s work that I feel contribute to its allure. One has to do with the iconographical meanings of the imagery and how they resonate (I believe a more apt term than illustrate) with the Faust story. And there are those varied color spaces that swing from one painting to the next (even within a single painting), from high-key, “chemical” colors to more earthy, “baroque” palettes (see Earth Spirit (Frosty). I could also focus on what I would describe as the “liquid circuitries” that wend throughout many of his pieces, sometimes manifesting as waterways and in others as concatenations of tubes and vials—all pictorial devices of flow and interconnections (see Homunculus below). All this and more, but alas, these must await further examination at another time.

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Joshua Marsh | Regressive Dose | 2022 | Graphite on Paper | 5" x 3.875" | Courtesy of the artist and Shoshana Wayne Gallery

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Something About Categories

I want to turn to an especially intriguing feature that, as much as anything, challenges the way we engage and make sense of these artworks. I am fascinated by the way they blur conventional categorical distinctions. Whereas my observations so far have focused on perceptual sleights of hand, here I am entertaining their conceptual counterpart. Briefly, categories (at least these sorts) are cultural carve-outs of reality that for good or for bad, implicitly or explicitly, underpin how we conceptually grasp and organize pretty much everything including artworks. 

With Marsh’s drawings and paintings we encounter a mash-up of two long-standing art categories, landscape and still life. Another art lingo term for these is genres. Each of these genres is ladened with their tacit “laws” governing how objects should inhabit their virtual spaces. Of course I am generalizing, but for the most part each of these genres organize their pictorial space differently. The deep space of the classical landscape is typically structured in accordance with a foreground, middle-ground, and background triad where the profusion of forms and surfaces work in concert to guide the viewer’s eye throughout the scene. On the other hand, the conventional still life presents a much shallower space affording and encouraging close inspection of discrete objects. Thus the viewer’s job description varies considerably depending on the genre. 

Many of the Marsh’s scenes display what I would describe as categorical blends of these two genres. Again and again we observe objects arranged in what, at first blush, suggest a still life setting only to see, upon closer inspection, these same elements participating in a fantastical landscape.

 Joshua Marsh | Homunculus | 2022 | Acrylic on Canvas Over Panel |  28.5” x 22” | Courtesy of the artist and Shoshana Wayne Gallery

Homunculus presents to our view variously shaped and sized vials, flasks, and tubes distributed across much of the painting—not the stuff of classical still life but, nonetheless, discrete objects arrayed for our inspection. Upon first glance in the lower half it is easy to presume many of these are situated on an actual or implied geometric plane—not exactly a continuous tabletop but nevertheless functioning in a similar manner.

This allusive grounding plane is initially signaled by the two drawers at the bottom whose upward facing planes suggest a much broader, notional plane receding further back into the image space. Above the left drawer we see what appears to be a continuation of that plane (albeit with a slightly changed slant) manifested by that brightly lit form with its sharply defined, undulating left edge. It is hard not to perceive this as a virtual tabletop supporting those two vessels and what seems like a cast shadow. And due to a perceptual mechanism known as “filling in,” this floating plane seems to extend rightward across the image, similarly grounding other objects, including the tall, dark blue vessel.

Not surprising, as a landscape, this painting is anything but conventional, which I believe is precisely the point. And yet there are present here just enough spatial cues to underpin the spatial logic of landscape. Even without a continuous, receding ground, it is hard not to to perceive these forms loosely situated according to foreground, middle-ground, and background registers. Partly this is effected by the use of diminution where, with some exceptions, larger and more prominent forms occupy the bottom zones (a.k.a. foreground) and smaller less defined forms hover toward the top (background). However, I feel that it is the overall atmospherics—the combined effects of light and space—that sets my gaze wandering throughout this oddly delightful and ominous landscape teeming with objects, events, and sightlines.

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At the risk of belaboring the point, I want briefly to point out yet another categorical blend occurring in a few of these works, namely the juxtaposition of two fundamentally different pictorial “styles.” Throughout the drawings and paintings Marsh deploys his considerable rendering skills in the service of exacting mimesis of specific elements only to seamlessly transition to what I would describe as a stylized cartoon vernacular. For this, I will let the artworks speak for themselves, especially Euphorion Snow Globe.

Joshua Marsh | Euphorion Snow Globe | 2022 | Acrylic on Canvas Over Panel   22” x 17” | Courtesy of the artist and Shoshana Wayne Gallery

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In Summary

I must confess that I have fallen far short of my quest for that “modified theory of everything,” as there is just too much to address in this limited venue. I hope, more modestly, that I have contributed to a better understanding of how these enigmatic artworks so playfully elude our perceptual and conceptual grasp by describing how they effect key transformative experiences before the gaze of the viewer. And finally, what better way to sign off than to turn to the source, an especially suggestive fragment from Goethe’s Faust.

Are we coming? are we going?
Are we standing? There's no knowing!
All is whirling, all is flowing!
Rocks and trees with weird grimaces
Shift their shape and change their places;
Wild fires wander, teeming, growing.

(Translation by David Luke, Oxford University Press, 1987)

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For a more extensive view of the exhibition “In Your Arms I’m Radiant: Chie Fueki and Joshua Marsh” and Marsh’s work go to:

Gallery: http://shoshanawayne.com
Website: https://joshuamarsh.com

Geometric Abstraction and Visual Metaphor

This essay was originally published in the book titled DISCURSIVE GEOMETRY AND MORE, published in Poland by Goldenmark Publications, 2023 (in both Polish and English). This collection of essays and monographs was edited by Mark Starel. A PDF version can be viewed at:

https://discursivegeometry.art/dg-books

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Geometric Abstraction and Visual Metaphor (A Thought Experiment)

I have long been intrigued by abstract art’s capacity to deploy visual metaphor in a nonlinguistic mode. For this writing, I am focusing on a specific sub-category of abstract art commonly referred to as geometric abstraction. [1]  I am proposing that subtle metaphoric operations often take place in both the creation and the reception of geometric abstract artworks—at least in some instances. Here I am describing metaphoric operations as the transfer of qualities and relations from relatively concrete domains of experience for the purpose of conceptualizing more abstract domains. We now understand (thanks in part to the extensive writings of Mark Johnson and George Lakoff) that metaphor is a critical cognitive mechanism by which we conceptually grasp and explain so much of our inner and outer reality that would be otherwise unfathomable. For example, try describing almost any sort of temporal experience without resorting to spatial metaphors. I am suggesting here that the appeal of many geometric abstract artworks is sometimes motivated by more than their decorative and/or formal qualities—that other levels of meaning-making are consciously or subconsciously prompted via metaphorical mappings.

At the outset I want to state my indebtedness to a wide range of thinkers and researchers operating in multiple disciplines (neural sciences, cognitive sciences, developmental psychology, phenomenology, linguistics, and more) and have, in my opinion, convincingly made the case for a thoroughly embodied cognition [2]. At stake here is a radical refutation of a deep-seated metaphysic and mind/body dualism underpinning centuries of philosophical and religious assumptions of human meaning-making. Here, I am repurposing these insights to proffer an enhanced understanding of this specific art practice. To be clear, I am not attempting to lay down a drawn-out argument but rather to offer, as a thought experiment, an alternative view of geometric abstraction’s potential impact on both artists and viewers.

It is hardly a radical stance to champion art as an alternative mode of representing experience whose mode of meaning-making serves as an antidote to linguistic, propositional, and predominantly linear discourse. However, such laudatory sentiments so often fizzle when confronted with the thorny issue of attributing “meaning” to art practices where nothing is being “illustrated” and nothing explicitly stated. I think we can get past that. For starters, It should be emphasized that any meaning one may assign to an artwork is not some free-floating, transcendent entity that somehow inheres in the artwork; but rather we are talking about a meaningful experience resulting from the interaction between an artwork and a human viewer. Ultimately any experience on the part of that viewer is an amalgam of cognitive and affective operations.

One thing that has been abundantly evident in over several decades of research in the neural and cognitive sciences is that much of human cognition and feeling takes place below the threshold of consciousness. With this in mind, it makes sense that a viewer’s “gut feeling” or their inarticulable fascination with such and such artwork might be generated in part by subconscious responses. Shaun Gallagher (2005) refers to these as “prenoetic” operations that help structure consciousness without it being aware. Consequently, I believe that, with some artworks, these “subpersonal” cognitive operations are likely prompting a cascade of associations and visceral responses of which the viewer may or may not be fully aware. Certainly with most geometric abstract artworks, nothing is illustrated and nothing is explained, yet one’s experienced interaction may very well qualify as “meaningful.”

Now to the essential question: how might visual metaphor be implicated in geometric abstraction? Let’s examine just one among many areas of possibility.

What can be more basic and fundamental to human experience than our ongoing bodily engagement with and within space? Fundamentally, we are biological organisms evolutionarily built for movement in space. All quantitative spatial experience (e.g., degrees of proximity and distance) and qualitative (e.g., relative sense of accessibility, orientation or disorientation) are generated by the kinds of perceptions and the sensory-motor systems at our disposal that operate in concert with not just our very bodily brain but with our entire body. [3] Not only are our movements and interactions with our environment fundamental to our existence, but our innate and learned spatial competencies underpin a great deal of our cognitive grasp of highly abstract, non spatial realms of experience. The philosopher, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, refers to this as a “bodily logos, a natural kinetic intelligence.” (2009) 

And this leads me to geometry, that branch of mathematics indexed to spatial visualization and intuition. Indeed, the Greek root of geo-metry is translated in English as “earth-measurement.” Crucially, geometry—at least its Euclidean version—assumes a naturally continuous space and, within it, the possibility of the movement of objects, forces, and bodies. Geometry entails high levels of symbolization and abstraction to conceptualize what our animate bodies know tacitly.

So how might abstract geometric reasoning play a role in conjuring up foundational, somatic experience in our interactions with artworks? In other words, if I am proposing a body-mind continuum between our primary spatial capacities and their meaningful evocations in artworks, how might these seemingly distinct realms be linked? Not surprisingly my answer is visual metaphor (among other cognitive mechanisms that I’m not addressing). Here it is worth repeating what I mean by metaphoric operations: the transfer of qualities and relations from relatively concrete domains of experience for the purpose of conceptualizing more abstract domains. Here the “concrete domain” is our ongoing bodily interactions in space (“corporal-kinetic patterning.” Sheets-Johnstone, 2009). The “abstract domain” can be almost anything whose explanation and understanding requires or at least will be greatly enhanced by spatial metaphors. I have already mentioned time, but I could add any number of experiences such as, for example, emotional states (e.g. “My mood is a bit low today.” “I’m feeling on top of the mountain.”). Metaphor may not be absolutely necessary, but literal explications of these sorts of feelings would prove at best tortured and likely inadequate to fully convey the sentiment.

With language (written, spoken, or merely thought out) we enlist metaphors with words and sentences. But with static, wordless geometric abstractions we draw from a lexicon of geometric figures that I believe are able to graphically enact inexpressible kinesthetic memories from a lifetime of intimate spatial situations.

To demonstrate how this might play out with actual artworks, I want to share my own initial interactions with just three artworks [4] that highlight what is arguably the most basic of geometrical primitives—the line. As my focus here is lImited to spatial experience, I feel that lines are apt visual metaphors of movement and directionality. The artworks I am presenting do not invoke overt illusionistic or naturalistic scenes or do their lines function like the more “explanatory” lines of diagrams. Here, lines are in the service of artistic expression and thus should be apprehended and distinguished as much as anything by their qualities (e.g. meandering, straight, hesitant, forceful)—all the better to flex their metaphoric muscles. 

Regarding the artworks of Lorraine Tady and Rebecca Rutstein, I need to emphasize that these are my interactions; I make no claim to represent the artists’ intentions or even that they would go along with my ideas about visual metaphor.

Lorraine Tady | Electro Magnetic Projection Wave | 2022 | UV ink on canvas, | 72” x 60” | Courtesy of the artist and Barry Whistler Gallery

At first glance at Lorraine Tady’s Electro Magnetic Projection Wave, I am drawn to the swooping quality of the more salient, curving blue lines that so dramatically traverse the virtual expanse. Of course I am responding to the luscious color and its dynamic composition. However, on a deeper level I am reacting to what I would characterize as a geometric choreography of multiple, interwoven movements. Of course this is a still image and so nothing is literally moving; yet I do not hesitate to characterize it as movement. Why am I doing this? I think it is because of the capacity of lines, as visual metaphors, to facilitate the cognitive transfer of my felt sense of movement to the more abstracted domains of imagination. And this is not a passive imagination, a mere “imaging” (like conjuring up an image of Mickey Mouse). Rather, this is a generative and participatory imagination through which I actively “converse” with the artwork.

Electro Magnetic Projection Wave conjures for me an exceptionally crowded and teeming space, yet ironically a space that mostly (but not everywhere) offers little resistance to unrestrained movement. And it is not just any kind of movement but rapid and intensely frenetic movement. These hyper animated lines neither contain nor connect anything. Rather, they operate as lines of force, many extending far beyond the putative containment of the image format. All this triggers in me both feelings of exhilaration and a foreboding of potential catastrophe. It echoes for me similar kinds of thrills riding roller coasters, only exponentially more intense, as if my coaster’s tracks were entangled among countless others (with no one awake in the control tower!). I also bring to this image (or the image brings to me) still other associations like barreling along expressways at dangerously high speeds.

Rebecca Rutstein | Cosmic Traveler| 2022 | acrylic, flashe, and spray paint on canvas | 36” x 36” | Credit: Courtesy of the Artist and Bridgette Mayer Gallery | ©Rebecca Rutstein

Next up is Rebecca Rutstein’s painting, Cosmic Traveler. Similar to my observations of Tady’s artwork, I am overlooking many important features so as to focus solely on the metaphoric impact of lines. Indeed, there are many similarities, not least of which are their richly saturated colors. Of particular importance for my purposes are the insertions, in both artworks, of those partial edges that constrain if not contain the trajectory of the lines. We see these scattered throughout Tady’s piece and very prominently off-center in Rutstein’s. However, in these two artworks I see significant differences, especially in the qualities and the “behaviors” of the lines. Whereas Tady’s are more elongated and (mostly) curving, Rutstein’s are uniformly rectilinear and angular, thus evoking very different kinesthetic associations. As well, Rutstein’s lines are much wider relative to their actual or projected length, and this, I feel, is significant; the width/length ratios of lines often metaphorically signal different velocities. Although I initially regard Rutstein’s lines as moving, the nature of their motion is radically different than Tady’s—and by extension, the kinds of associations they summon.

Unlike the unrestrained exuberance of Tady’s lines, Rutstein’s velocities are far more attenuated because of the different ways they function. Are the seemingly “faster” blue lines on the left functioning solely as moving lines, or are they connecting lines that link unseen elements beyond the frame? Or that interlaced tangle of lines on the right: are these lines moving, or are they functioning as containing lines, enfolding shifting, honeycombed pockets of space? As metaphoric vehicles of meaning-making, these colliding constellations of lines evoke for me not a single spatial continuum but multiple, interpenetrating spaces—not a plenum affording effortless passage but one of enormous density and structural complexity, one well beyond my capacity to navigate. It is hard to know where to enter or where to go (and if I were to go, would I actually get there?). Like with any artwork, my responses vary according to my state of mind, but generally speaking, I find that these complex geometric structures offer a perfect analog to the perplexing, networked world around me—manifold interlocking “spaces” for which I am woefully unequipped to grasp, much less to navigate.

Steven Baris | Never the Same Space Twice D36 | 2022 | oil on Mylar | 24” x 24”

Finally I will turn my attention to a painting from my Never the Same Space Twice series. This body of work is tethered to my ongoing investigation that I have titled the Expanded Diagram Project. Here I explore the intersections of what I describe as “diagrammatic thinking” and a broad range of historical and contemporary artistic practices. [4] Indeed, diagrammatic thinking is an essential component of this series of paintings. And more to the point in this context, diagrammatic practices and metaphoric operations are not mutually exclusive with not only my work but with a broad range of geometric abstract practices. In many instances, these are two sides of the same coin.

Unlike my third-person observations of the previous artworks, I speak here from a first-person perspective that affords me the license to address influences, intentionalities, and felt meanings. With Never The Same Space Twice D36, I deploy lines to evoke hybrid topological route maps. As with all of the works in this series, the lines map no specific or actual space(s), but rather they enact a virtual experience of navigating indeterminate terrains marked by discontinuities, disruptions, and detours. A common thread connecting nearly all facets of my art is my obsession with the challenges of spatial orientation and way-finding in our rapidly re-engineered, networked ecosystem. For me, topological mapping offers an apt metaphoric schema to represent my deeply felt sense of the fragmentation of contemporary spatial and temporal experience.

The very ground of the this painting is subdivided (and I would add, “fractured”) into four contiguous sections abutting each other at various angles. The broad rectilinear lines—each differentiated by contrasting colors and values—“make their way” haltingly across the painting. The lines’ “movements” are, at various junctures, suspended, redirected, sped-up or slowed-down. Implicit within the broader analogy of a route map, movement and navigation are inextricable. To navigate is to move, or more specifically, to plot or enact a sequence of “next moves” so as to insure successful passage through imminent spaces and temporalities.

And so again I return to lines’ metaphorical capacity to effect a transfer from “source domains” of real-world experiences of movement (or of resistance to movement) to “target domains” of the imagination and the aesthetic. It’s though the deployment of lines that I am able to re-think and re-feel my life’s load of alternately losing and finding my way.

In summary, I hope I have offered an alternative understanding of how seemingly inert, two dimensional geometric figures can body forth a broad range of associations, facilitated in part by visual metaphoric operations. [5] Ruminating as I have on these artworks, I relied almost entirely on metaphorical language; literal statements were few and far between. By using written words to deploy those metaphors, I tried to evince feelings felt and perceptions perceived, all of which were derived from my nonverbal interactions with silent, geometric visual displays—that is, from geometric abstract artworks.

Notes:

1. Art categories are notoriously slippery, geometric abstraction being no exception; I try to avoid over-reliance on them. However, for the present discussion I am offering a working definition that I hope is adequate to account for the countless variations of self-described “geometric abstract” artworks produced since the early 20th century. Here we go: an artwork eschewing naturalistic forms and space that employs geometric primitives (lines, triangles, squares, etc.) as its primary compositional elements.

2. Here is a  partial “tip of the iceberg” list of influential writers: Mark Johnson (1987, 2007), George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980,1999), Maxine Sheets-Johnstone (1999, 2009), Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch (1993), Antonio Damasio (1999, 2012), and Shaun Gallagher (2005).

3. It is worth noting here the discoveries in the neural sciences have revealed neural activity in the premotor and motor areas of the cortex that are activated not only when a subject executes a movement in space but also when a similar movement is merely observed, AND when it is imagined! So it is not hard to conceive that art and cultural representations more generally would evoke or elicit our conscious or unconscious response to remembered and/or imagined spatial “situations.”

4. Different parts of the Expanded Diagram project can be viewed at https://www.stevenbaris.com/about-the-project, stevenbaris.com/about-diagrams, stevenbaris.com/diagrams-and-art, and stevenbaris.com/blog . I should add that both Lorraine Tady and Rebecca Rutstein were subjects of my Expanded Diagram blog. 

5. I need to point out that the metaphoric reach of geometric abstraction is hardly limited to spatial experiences, and of course lines are only one of many geometric forms and figures at its disposal.

Lorraine Tady: Graphing the Invisible

The first time I saw Lorraine Tady’s artworks I was immediately struck by the impossibility of conceiving, much less picturing, time, motion, and change (and invisible forces more generally) without recourse to spatial metaphors. And to realize this through mediums that are themselves inherently, static (and yes, spatial) is an ambition all the more Herculean. And yet, there are a handful of artists like Tady who appear hell bent on pursuing this elusive capture. It seems to me that an artist working in space-centric media (e.g. painting, drawing, etc.) can choose from only two basic approaches. One, you can try to “picture” time and change through appropriate imagery or ready-at-hand symbols (e.g. a clock); an example might be a painting of a car driving down a road with an added touch of motion blur; or a picture of trees bending in the wind, thus implying the invisible cause of their bending. Or an artist, like Tady, can eschew pictorial representation altogether and take a more “diagrammatic” turn by deploying any number of abstract (non pictorial) visual elements to virtually enact time and change. By characterizing this as “diagrammatic,” I’m not saying that Tady’s artworks look like conventional diagrams; rather I’m suggesting that her unique abstract lexicon redirects the viewer’s inclination to imagine something (which is precisely what pictures do) to a very different kind of engagement, one better described as a process of correlation. Her work draws the viewer into these visually rich, virtual spaces, and once in, stages opportunities to correlate her signature clusters of lines with any number of unseen forces. And this experience is not a mere theater for the retina but, like all great art, it summons forth our distributed intellect, one wholly encompassing the brain and the entire body.

Lorraine Tady | Navigation Series, Compass | 2020 | archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm | 24 x 20 inches, Edition of 3 | Courtesy of the artist and Barry Whistler Gallery, Dallas

As my eye scans and jumps about her paintings, I‘ve no choice but to accede to their propulsive movements of darting, (curving or strait), accelerating and decelerating lines. I am not passively observing but, on some pre-reflective register, I find myself reciprocally participating. To lift a line from Joseph Goldstein,  I’m experiencing a “pairwise progression of knower and known.” (Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening, 2013)  Much like those trees bending to the invisible force of the wind, my mind/body twists and turns to the allusive rhythms of her compositions.

Lorraine Tady | Refraction Frequencies | 2021 | UV ink on canvas | 72" x 60" | Courtesy of the artist and Barry Whistler Gallery

Sometimes, the best way to grasp the essential qualities of a body of artwork is first to understand what it is NOT. To my way of thinking, some artworks aspire to be a noun and others, a verb. Safe to say, Tady’s artworks do not emulate nouns. Even as verbs, they are not what linguists refer to as stative verbs, which, like the “be” verbs, express a state or a condition which is unlikely to change. As we will see, Tady’s work overwhelmingly channels “action verbs” that signal processes in medias res. So before I launch headlong into one of Tady’s paintings, it would help to set the stage by fleshing out this crucial noun/verb distinction. Very briefly, let’s compare the artworks of two well-known abstract artists whose later “mature” paintings lie at opposite poles of the noun/verb spectrum.

Since we’re talking about a spectrum here, there are plenty of paintings situated somewhere in the middle. But way over at the “noun” end, it’s hard to find a better example than the paintings of Mark Rothko. It goes without saying that countless people approach his work as quasi objects of meditation. Not many modern, secular painters have had their works installed in a specially designated chapel, and it’s not uncommon for visitors to liken their trip to this chapel as a kind of pilgrimage. I submit that it’s the paintings’ “noun-like” qualities that at least partially underpin this meditative experience (along with their shimmering and sadly deteriorating color). Like a mandala or a Greek icon, they evoke an aura of profound timelessness. I know from my own encounters with his paintings, I find my gaze oscillating back and forth between the (typically) two or three barely contiguous, feathered rectangles of color. Certainly my gaze is active, but the forms and their interrelations seem frozen in time and space. At least for the moment, nothing’s going anywhere; it’s ok to take a bathroom break.

Left: Mark Rothko | Orange and Yellow  | 1956 | oil on canvas | 231.1 x 180.3 cm | Credit: Albright-Knox Art Gallery

Right: Jackson Pollock | Number 4 (Gray and Red | 1948 | enamel on paper | 22.6 x 30.8 inches | Credit: Frederick R. Weisman Foundation

Whereas at the “verb” end of this spectrum I point to the paintings of Rothko’s contemporary, Jackson Pollock, whose work was famously characterized as “action painting.” No less a source of reverence for his admirers, but the experience and tone evoked by his paintings are markedly different. It’s as if I were to take that bathroom break, I might discover that all those tangled lines and drips have shifted if ever so slightly. Obviously both Rothko’s and Pollock’s paintings are fixed, bounded objects, but their virtual worlds afford me radically different experiences. 

Lorraine Tady | Electromagnetic Field 2 | 2020 | UV ink on canvas | 60” x72” | Courtesy of the artist and Barry Whistler Gallery

Now let’s turn to my experience experiencing Tady’s, Electromagnetic Field 2. For me to talk about her work in any meaningful way, I must remind myself that I’m never just talking about an object (either a stretched canvas on a wall or a jpeg displayed on a screen) but rather my interactions with that particular object. Immediately as I enter the virtual space of Electromagnetic Field 2, I commence a silent rapport with its pentimenti of spent or currently spending lines of force. Once inside, I’ve no choice but to try to make sense of it all—that’s what humans do. But unlike, let’s say, a traditional still life painting, I’m far less inclined to perceive the visual array before me as a passive void filled with “things,” but rather as an enveloping force field animated by ever-shifting patterns of interactions.

Again, I’m focusing here on Electromagnetic Field 2, but throughout this writing I’ve scattered images of other pieces that would, to a greater or lesser extent, receive a similar treatment—always so many lines doing so many things. With this piece my eye is immediately drawn to the large zone of tangled green/yellow lines that dominate the center and lower right of the painting. As it is the area with the greatest light/dark contrast, it’s hard to miss. Upon closer viewing I realize this is not what I initially perceived which was a seemingly homogeneous mishmash of marks simply “filling” a space. Instead, I sense this as a tensional field animated by two constellations of lines performing different functions. First there are those scribbled clusters that seem to operate on the very cusp of coherence, as if some peculiar species of glyphs in the process of formation. But rather than free-floating entities, they appear reigned in by the gravitational pull of those far more organized, parabolic lines directing and giving form to all this raucous scuffle. Echoing these parabolic paths are the thicker, blue lines passing through and beyond this entire sector, spanning the full expanse of the painting. I find these lines to be especially intriguing as they’re strongly suggestive of sine curves but with a heightened sense of directionality and agency. I could go on but, by highlighting just this limited aspect of just one painting I am suggesting that Tady’s work can be regarded as a kind of graphing—an exceedingly lively diagrammatic visualization of what is otherwise intellectually ungraspable.

Lorraine Tady | Refraction Frequencies 3 | 2021, acrylic on canvas | 24” x 20” | Courtesy of the artist and Barry Whistler Gallery

My exposition may or may not fully align with the artist’s intentions, and it certainly does not address the broad range of artworks and ideas that she is pursuing. However, if only to underscore my clear and present bias toward this particular “reading” of her work, I feel it’s important to close this out by underscoring Tady’s highly unique and hybrid creative process. She is equally at ease working with both analog and digital media, including conventional painting, drawing, printmaking and computer generated imagery. She frequently jumps back and forth from one to the other in the development of a single artwork; a particular work often passes through successive stages that incorporate any or all of these fundamentally different modes of visualization. Yet even when she constrains her explorations to a single medium—let’s say painting—she seems to be looking over her shoulder, as it were, to the potentialities afforded by the others. Indeed, a very productive feedback loop. In light of my extensive observations of Tady’s work, I can’t help but regard her idiosyncratic processes as, themselves, performative correlates with the artworks’ dynamic “content.”

Lorraine Tady | Projection | 2022 | acrylic on canvas | 42” x 36” | Courtesy of the artist and Barry Whistler Gallery

One final thought. Having now spent considerable time inhabiting Tady’s artworks, I’ve come to realize that I too am far better fathomed as a verb than as a noun. If only for a brief moment, I can re-construe myself not as a static, self-enclosed “thing” occupying inert space but rather, as (so exquisitely mapped throughout Tady’s oeuvre) ever-shifting interactions with the surrounding invisible world.

For a more extensive view of Tadys work, go to:

website: lorrainetady.com

instagram: @lorrainetady

gallery: barrywhistlergallery.com

Continually Discontinuous

The Artworks of Nelleke Beltjens, Lisa Corinne Davis, and Emma Langridge

Just can’t stop obsessing about flow (or more technically, “flow state”). I’m clearly not alone as it has garnered considerable attention since it was conceived in the mid 70s by positive psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihály. He coined the term to designate “a mental state of total immersion and focus in an activity.” More recently flow has morphed into a veritable secret sauce of well-being, affording any number of highly sought-after states of mind that promise seamless, uninterrupted sequences of thought and action.

It seems that almost everyone wants to inhabit this flow thing, especially me. I’d do anything for more flow. But truth be told, for most of us, managing our harried lives outside the monastery, it’s not an easy thing to sustain, especially in our hyper stimulated environment. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that an ideal of sustained focus would gain prominence just as our electronic technologies were ramping up their delivery systems of distraction and multitasking. In fact, Attention-Deficit Disorder was first introduced in the 1980 edition of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), a mere five years after Csíkszentmihály’s “invention.” I suspect that flow, like so many things we take for granted, began to rise in value in response to its felt diminishment—like how we are inclined to appreciate oxygen just a little bit more as we begin to suffocate.

For artists, flow states are well worth the effort, especially considering their ready association with creative processes. Yet I wonder if, like the current rage for CBD, flow’s creative properties may be a tad oversold or at least over simplified. Seriously, how often and for how long is anyone actually experiencing deep flow states? And yet plenty of creative types manage to, well, create. We’ve all done our share of flowing, but the fact is that most of our hours are given over to various bouts of distraction, hesitancy, diversion, procrastination, or what I’ll just refer to, more generally, as non-flow. Perhaps flow is just one of a handful of critically important tools from a larger tool box and has only limited utility when used in isolation. Crazy thought: what if those decidedly non-flow moments are equally integral to our creative process, and what if one’s ultimate success lies in the artful balance of these two seemingly irreconcilable mental states?

Nelleke Beltjens | Circumstances for Thing Happening | 2020 | ink pen on paper, watercolor, reinserted cut-outs | 30 x 76 inches | Credit: courtesy of the artist

Enough with my expansive and admittedly highly speculative musings. As this is ultimately a discussion about visual art, it’s time to swerve—time to transpose the psychologically inflected flow/non-flow binary to the more graphically accessible opposition of continuity/discontinuity. I’ll spare you the full lecture, but I feel I need at least to mention that the continuity/discontinuity binary has enjoyed a very long history of debate and speculation, going back at least to the pre-Socratics and followed by centuries of lively argumentation in the fields of mathematics, physics, and philosophy. So consider this posting as my contribution to the field of visual art.

Emma Langridge | Disrupt 1 | 2020 | enamel and acrylic on wood | 11.5 x 8.3 inches | Credit: courtesy of the artist

Ostensibly I’m writing about the artworks of three artists, focusing on how the implicit movement in their compositions is alternately continuous and discontinuous. But far more than a formal analysis of compositional strategies, I am attempting to disclose instances of how meaning is generated in decidedly non discursive, or non pictorial visual art (for our purposes, “abstract” art). It’s not the kind of meaning readily available to verbal exposition, but it’s no less meaningful; it’s whatever that “something” is that motivates the artist and, relayed through an artwork, attracts and holds the attention of its viewers. Yes, I realize that abstract painting appeals on many different levels not least of which is a pure delight in form, color, material, and composition. Often that’s all there is, and that’s perfectly fine. But here I’m suggesting that these components can also body forth ineffable meanings for which even the artist is often unaware and rarely able to articulate. It’s not so much a register of meaning that the artist communicates, but rather one that is performed—performed in the very making of the artwork, the physical manipulation of the material and the unique sequences of seemingly inadvertent decisions to arrive at the point where it’s “just right.”

And what makes this “just right” just right? Certainly this varies with different artists, but I’m proposing that, in some instances, an artist’s most elemental, sensorimotor interactions with the world are re-enacted, as it were, in a material form and process we call art. If this art feels “just right” for someone else, it may be eliciting similar bodily/cognitive experiences for them.

Lisa Corinne Davis | Conclusive Concoction | 2021 | oil on panel | 56 x 46 inches | Credit: courtesy of the artist

Now I will turn my attention to these three artists and focus on a single artwork of theirs that displays an exceptionally innovative balancing act between continuity and discontinuity as manifested in their unique visual lexicons. Although I’m discussing only one piece per artist, I’ve added other works of theirs so as to present a larger context of their current practice.

Nelleke Beltjens (The Netherlands)

Nelleke Beltjens | Road To Travel #2 | 2018 | ink pen on paper, watercolor, reinserted cut-outs | 30 x 22 inches | Credit: courtesy of the artist

In alphabetical order, I begin with Dutch artist, Nelleke Beltjens’s Road To Travel #2. Here I’m focusing on just one of its many intriguing features—its movement. I’m seeing here not just movement in the singular but multiple movements—micro movements nested within more all-encompassing movements. But first: what do I even mean when I say “movement” when looking at this static artifact called a drawing (or still images more generally)? I don’t hesitate to deploy this term, as would many others used to looking at and talking about art. But what compels me to assign the word “movement,” to patently unmoving images—the same word I use to denote what is most elemental of my actual bodily movement in real space? Clearly some kind of metaphorical transfer is taking place—some pre-reflective linkage of my sensorimotor experience of moving in space to what, in this drawing, are patterned sequences of marks and shapes spanning its surface.

So if artists and viewers alike partake—even enjoy—these kinds of vicarious experiences of movement, what are we to think when that movement is interrupted, detoured, or intermittently occluded from view? Indeed, this is precisely what is happening in this drawing which becomes even more obvious upon closer viewing. When I first saw it I instantly responded to what I perceived as a sweeping, “swoosh-like” form “entering” from the top right and exiting at the bottom right (although I could just as easily reversed its implicit direction). But on both closer and longer inspection I realized that what seemed a continuous, unidirectional flow was composed of a patchwork of separate, contiguous shapes, each containing arrays of mostly parallel inked lines running in multiple directions. And with even closer inspection I discovered that the lines themselves—the ultimate graphical elements signaling continuous, directional flow—were in fact blatantly discontinuous, as each line is broken up into a series of extended, discrete marks—what Beltjens describes as “staccato lines: tiny marks, vertically placed next to each other.” And if all this weren’t enough to scramble my expectations of flowing, uninterrupted movement, I soon discovered that the very ground itself—the paper substrate—is anything but continuous; rather each rectilinear section of paper is a separate insert—cut from another drawing—expertly placed into a perfectly matched cutout. She characterizes this process as “creating a topographical upheaval between the surfaces of several drawings, which are now indelibly linked. (See Figure 1)

Nelleke Beltjens | detail: Road To Travel #2 | 2018 | ink pen on paper, watercolor, reinserted cut-outs | 30 x 22 inches | Credit: courtesy of the artist

So far I’ve avoided any mention of the variously saturated red and blue forms applied with watercolor. As basic compositional devices these operate on many levels. Regardless of their varied degrees of color saturation, each of these appear to randomly punctuate the larger visual field. As fully fleshed out 2D shapes they set up a dynamic contrast to the less graphically prominent rectilinear outlines and the welter of broken lines. Although these forms are subjected to the same ruptures as the other components of the drawing, they seem to play a more complex and dispersed game of continuity/discontinuity. As I scan back and forth across this drawing, I wonder if these seemingly fragmented forms participate in some hidden, interconnected network.

All this brings to mind a fascinating concept called object permanence which comes out of developmental psychology (specifically early childhood development) and refers to the human cognitive ability to know that objects continue to exist even though they momentarily cease to be seen or heard. Of course, anyone reading this would take this for granted, but let us not undervalue its evolutionary benefits. Just because that lion suddenly turns invisible behind that rock doesn’t mean it ceases to be dangerously real. Yet another example presented in Figure 2: Just because the road ahead appears intermittently occluded by the rolling hills, it doesn’t mean it’s not in fact a continuous ribbon leading to grandma’s house. Turns out that continuities and discontinuities are inextricably interwoven in the very heart of our experience; and this very paradoxical state of affairs is a primary driver of this body of Beltjens’s work.

Figure 2: Adapted from Thomas Hart Benton’s The High Plains | Original: oil on panel | 4.4 x 6.5 inches

In fact, long before Beltjens and I began to converse about this project, I assumed (as is often the case) that I would be pushing my own interpretations—essentially reframing—her work in accordance with my investigation. So I was pleasantly surprised by how this theme of continuity/discontinuity so closely aligned with her own intentions. And I was even more impressed by how intelligently and poignantly she’s integrated her formal strategies with her deeply felt philosophies of life more broadly. Thus, I want to conclude this section with a few of her own words that resonate so powerfully with this remarkable work.

Nelleke Beltjens | I Dreamed I Was Sleeping #1 | 2017 | ink pen on paper, watercolor, reinserted cut-outs | 40 x 60 inches | Credit: courtesy of the artist

“I don’t believe in any life without interruptions. I often call this a necessary interruption, an interruption as a possibility to take another turn. So the interruption commences as a discontinuity which then becomes a start/beginning to a new yet different continuity—perhaps a new flow until the next interruption comes.” “Nothing is stable nor solid that continues. Nothing ever stays the same. And if nothing ever stays the same, then there is always discontinuity within continuity.”

Lisa Corinne Davis (USA)

Lisa Corinne Davis | Miraculous Measure | 2020 | oil on canvas | 40 x 35 inches | Credit: courtesy of the artist

Before turning to this painting—Miraculous Measure—by Lisa Corinne Davis, I’ll say that I’ve no intention of reducing her rich and varied body of work to my singular focus of continuity and discontinuity. Rather I’m interested in teasing out this one compositional feature to highlight its critical importance to the overall impact of her painting. Even the briefest viewing of her work reveals staggering degrees of complexity with its multiple, overlapping patterns and movements. And, of course, there’s the color. But if I were to single out a single diagrammatic feature consistently present in her work, it would be the grid. Or I should say multiple grids—compressing grids, expanding grids, puckering grids, distorting grids, and more. As my eye incessantly winds its way over, through, and around these gridded grounds, I feel it may be illuminating to contextualize their unique and subversive deployment.

I highlight subversive because that’s precisely what I see going on in light of the grid’s more extended history. Certainly the grid has a storied past in art-making beginning in the early 20th century and continuing to this day. Much has been written about this, not least of which was Rosalind Krauss’s seminal essay, Grids. No need to rehearse this here, but I feel it may be instructive, as a counterpoint to Davis’s work, to recall the grid’s functionality in math and science. Briefly, I’ll just point to Descartes’ famous coordinate system with its now familiar x and y axes that, explicitly or implicitly, graph a gridded space underpinning countless mathematical operations and information visualizations. Regardless of the application, this is a space characterized by perfectly regular and measurable extension—a space in which the interrelationships and progressions of its various elements are, in theory, fully ordered, mappable, and rational.

Lisa Corinne Davis | Deliberate Deceit | 2020 | oil on canvas | 50 x 40 inches | Credit: courtesy of the artist

So back to the word “subversive.” The gridded space(s) of Davis’s paintings could not be more opposite in their visual display and tone. More crucially, I feel that this very subversion of the “classical” grid fuels the highly distinctive interactions of continuous and discontinuous movement animating her paintings. Her painting, Miraculous Measure, practically convulses with its densely packed, overlapping grids. Let’s start with the more conventional grid-like array of the white squares distributed across the entirety of the painting’s surface. Yet even these, with their more predictable regularity, are frequently disrupted by numerous obstructing forms and meandering lines. These white blocks seem to lie simultaneously atop and within a teeming field of linear grids—in some areas these adhere to a more concentric organization, yet in other zones they resemble, to my eye, wire mesh modelings of invisible 3D forms.

As a common feature of topographical mapping, the grid (think lines of latitude and longitude) underpins an expectation of orientation and way-finding—the possibility of continuous movement over a terrain. Whereas in Miraculous Measure, the combined effect of overlapping and often dissonant grids and patterns is one of profound disorientation, albeit one that is curiously fun and exhilarating.

Lisa Corinne Davis | Exact Ersatz | 2021 | oil on canvas | 50 x 40 inches | Credit: courtesy of the artist

Again, it’s over, through, and around this gridded space that the more prominent movements make their way. So what are the key visual elements that signal those movements? There are many, but I want to highlight those relatively thick, reddish brown, angular forms that seem to snake in and out of the painting. To me, they play a similar game of object permanence that I discussed above with Beltjens’s work. At first glance they present to me as separate fragments, but I quickly reconstitute them as a hidden continuum. Upon closer inspection I see that they echo similar but much thinner linear progressions scattered throughout the painting. Thick or thin, both versions simultaneously function as conventional lines and as linked, daisy chained series of boxlike enclosures; but either way, my eye can’t help but ceaselessly “move” along their meandering trajectories. However (and this is a big “however”), unlike the continuous path lines running through our Google maps, any expectation of smooth, uninterrupted flow is thwarted at every turn.

I want to conclude this examination of Miraculous Measure by returning to the question: “What is making it just right for me?” Why is this particular painted rectangle meaningful in a way that is unlikely the case for the latex-painted wall where it hangs? I suspect I might answer this differently depending on my mood, but I know I bring to this interface my own life experiences of negotiating all kinds of spatial situations—forests, plains, and cities; rational spaces, labyrinthine spaces, and so on. Usually I’m barely conscious of my spatial surround, but occasionally space itself emerges as an unavoidable protagonist, especially when I’m lost or disoriented—when the paradoxical interpenetration of continuity/discontinuity suddenly ceases to be a mere compositional exercise. Sometimes it’s fun and sometimes really scary, but one thing’s for sure; my most elemental sensorimotor faculties are roused to consciousness in stark relief to my usual, day-to-day sleepwalk. So, is it possible that this painting, with its alternations of movement and interruption (flow and non-flow), is provoking a similar arousing? I strongly believe the answer, for me, is yes.

Emma Langridge (Australia)

Emma Langridge | Lodestar | 2019 | enamel and acrylic on wood | 31.5 inches diameter | Credit: courtesy of the artist

Last but not least I turn my attention to this piece of Emma Langridge titled Lodestar. Upon first viewing, it’s clear that, unlike the other two works I’ve discussed, this painting adheres more exclusively to a geometric and relatively paired down visual lexicon. I generally prefer to minimize what I call “how did they do it?” explanations, but I suspect many viewers are perplexed by how this piece was actually made. No different than the artworks of Beltjen and Davis, the material procedures undergirding Langridge’s paintings are crucially integral to her highly distinctive oscillations of continuity and discontinuity. So without revealing too much (some mysteries need to be maintained), I’ll say this: Here she started with a circular wooden panel covered with a flat coat of acrylic paint. She temporarily affixed tape onto the surface, section by section, into which she incised sets of thin, closely spaced, parallel lines, using an exacto knife. The remaining, uncut strips of tape were now temporary stencils upon which she applied a thick layer of black enamel paint. Before that paint completely dried, she delicately removed the thin strips of tape and thus exposing the black lines and the larger, irregular black shapes.

I always place a lot of stock in my very first impressions and associations when I encounter an artwork for the first time. This one immediately evoked the art of marquetry (or intarsia) which entails highly precise inlays of variously colored and shaped materials (often wood) to construct an illusion of a unified surface—sometimes conveying regular patterns for decorative purposes and sometimes creating pictorial illusions. I suspect this association is not shared by Langridge, but I cannot help but sense how her piece captures both the “spirit of” and a “counter spirit of” that ancient art form. Clearly Langridge’s piece was constructed much differently, but I feel that it’s assemblage of light and dark fragments similarly exhibits a provisional unity contained within its circular format (that’s the “in the spirit” part). And yet, from a strict marquetry perspective, it would fail miserably with its blatantly imprecise joins (that’s the “counter-spirit” part). Similar to how I described Davis’s painting as subverting the constancy of the “classical” grid, I see this piece simultaneously offering up yet frustrating any expectation for a unified, unperturbed fill within what is the ultimate signifier of wholeness—the circle. I know this painting is essentially a continuous substrate (aka painted wood), and yet what I perceive is a disjointed arrangement of shapes. Ultimately it’s this arena of jostling, tectonic shifts where the synergies of continuity and discontinuity play out.

Figure 3: Emma Langridge | detail: Lodestar | 2019 | enamel and acrylic on wood | 31.5 inches diameter | Credit: courtesy of the artist

Viewing Lodestar solely through the lens of its composition, I see that the painting’s surface is largely composed of those tightly packed, angular shapes, each “filled” with thin, parallel lines (or “stripes” as Langridge would call them). Most of these lines move straight up and down, as they pass from shape to shape. This brings to mind the topological concept of invariants under transformation; the parallel lines (the “invariants”) appear to be continuous, top to bottom. Yet their tracks are repeatedly interrupted and sometimes slightly redirected (the “transformations”) at the edges of the contiguous, yellow shapes. As well, these lines are simultaneously performing movement (Langridge’s slightly more sober rendition of Klee’s “line going out for a walk”) and yet also functioning as static fillers of the varied yellow forms.

Complicating things further, are those regularly spaced diagonal lines crossing the field of vertical lines. Similar to the verticals, these diagonals only appear continuous. On closer inspection, these too are frequently interrupted, but unlike the verticals, different segments of these lines seem to be constructed by entirely different “stuff.” Some segments appear similar—albeit fainter—to the incised vertical lines, while other segments are wider, darker, and read as the negative spaces between the shapes. At the junctures of their shared trajectories, the two species of line sometimes align perfectly and are sometimes slightly askew.

Emma Langridge | Except | 2016 | enamel and acrylic on wood | 12.5 x 8.2 inches | Credit: courtesy of the artist

As academic as this kind of analysis may come off, I feel it’s worth the effort to grasp the compositional infrastructure manifesting Langridge’s more wide-ranging intentions. Regrettably I’ve not the space here to do her justice, but I was especially intrigued by her turn to digital imaging technologies and their discontents—more specifically to that all-too-familiar teetering of computer functionality referred to as the glitch. Langridge succinctly characterizes the precarious moment of the glitch as “all about the half-crashed file at the midpoint between perfection and complete destruction.” It’s precisely at these “midpoints” where, for better or for worse, the currents (flows) are momentarily stalled if not thoroughly broken. And so it’s in the spirit of the glitch that we see in this painting innumerable lines simulating continuous and discontinuous currents persistently in a state of interruption.

Emma Langridge | Untitled | 2021 | photograph | size: variable | Credit: courtesy of the artist

In conclusion to this writing, I have no conclusion—only to affirm the distinctive synergies of continuity/discontinuity so ably performed by these remarkable artists.

For a more extensive view of these artists’ works, go to:

Nelleke Beltljens
Website: https://nellekebeltjens.com
Instagram: @nellekebeltjens

Lisa Corinne Davis
Website: http://www.lisacorinnedavis.com
Instagram: @insta_lcd

Emma Langridge
Website: http://www.emmalangridge.com
Gallery website: https://www.graycontemporary.com/emmalangridge
Instagram: @emma.langridge