Composed of the meticulous graphite striations by local artist Claire Colette, the sweeping, gestural mark-making of colorful paints by Lana Williams, and Teresa Baker’s sculptural constructions of color and various media, “Heightened Subjectivity” at Temescal Alley’s Interface Gallery is unique in that it shies away from examining the typical characteristics of abstract artwork featured in group shows, but more deftly centers its focus on an intensive exploration into the materialism of non-representational art by its participating artists. Whether it is the gestural chance of paint onto the canvas at just the surface or constructed into its inherent foundations of creation, the artworks’ formal properties express each artists’ shared desire to present a space that is unfamiliar and perhaps a subversion to a more familiar abstract process, making their artwork a form existing within ambivalent states.
Claire Colette, “Heightened Subjectivity” at Interface Gallery
The small, delicate graphite works on paper by Claire Colette, as well as her sculptural renderings of similar striated shapes capture subtle psychic states, evoking what she says, “that which lies between the phenomenological and the empirical.” Colette’s purely abstract work in “Heightened Subjectivity” seem to be further progressions of her previous investigation into memory and sensory fragmentation. Her earlier work included meticulous depictions of landscapes and images from classic movies from which she broke down into thin strips that looked as if they were peeled away from the image. Working now purely in abstraction, Colette eschews the notion of the artist’s gesture in the process, as there seems to be minimal traces of her own markings within these stealthily-created grand, graphite stripes.
Teresa Baker (L) and Lana Williams (R), “Heightened Subjectivity” at Interface Gallery
Two large paintings on canvas created in concert by Lana Williams at Interface Gallery display her signature bold gestures, and vibrant colors. Williams describes her process as “a calculated risk,” where she “attempt[s] to formalize the coincidental and emphasize the conscious construction of composition.”These eclectic mark-makings, however, seem to have an intriguing correlation: the sharp, black line bisecting one painting looks to be ameliorated by cool, blue gaping oval of the other. Orange and lime strikes and rubbings onto one canvas complement the pink and tan drippings of the other, suggesting there is something more figurative and meaningful in her abstract art than simply gesture, paint and space by which abstraction has been commonly characterized.
Currently in residence at Headlands Center for the Arts as this year’s recipient of the Tournesol Award, Teresa Baker‘s mixed media works combine paint and various media from foam to wood to evoke a primarily visceral response, of which she says, “create another space where color and form overlap, interact, create movement, and create their own language.” Baker’s work give the impression of an attempt to reconcile the disparities, and aim to obfuscate the conventions of painting, collage and architecture, and she achieves it with accomplishment. It seems as if all the artists in “Heightened Subjectivity” have accomplished to define the abstract process to mean something completely of their own.
“Heightened Subjectivity” will be at Interface Gallery, 489 49th street in Temescal Alley through September 29.
Teresa Baker, “Heightened Subjectivity” at Interface Gallery
