Mark Grotjahn

Clarinette, Picasso

Bibemus, Cezanne

The more I look at Grotjahn's work, the more I think about Cezanne, Cubism, and the use of perspectival space. Cubism's premise is that the viewer sees various views of an object, all at once, in a flattened space (think of a map of the world). Forget objects, or flattening, now we get to see the construct of space itself from multiple angles as it recedes. Pretty cool.

Saltz mentioned in the article posted below, the notion of death anxiety or fear of the unknown. I had a prof that stated that all artists' work is about death or sex and sex is about death. A little morbid and yes, perhaps just a touch pessimistic but I agree in this instance. The monochromatic paintings I've seen (sadly not in person) deliver the somber elegy-like tone that makes me certainly think of infinitude, the unknown, a skewed sense of space that is off kilter (fear).

Back to Cezanne, the father of modernism. There is so much information out there on him and I wouldn't be able to do him justice, so I won't try to explain other than to say that his precarious, space that is somehow flat and spatial at once, is constructed in such a way, that there is a glimmer of the multiple views later taken and run with by Picasso and Braques. I see the "lineage" in Grotjahn's work and find it interesting to trace even if he is essentially flipping it upside down or out, or in, or opposing it in some way.

What makes this work relevant though? It seems (thankfully) there is no trace of irony or cynicism. But I certainly feel as if he is drawing deep from his modernist roots. Well, I don't have the answer to that and I don't condemn it for that either, it just makes me wonder.

Mark Grotjahn

I am going to post a bit of commentary on these paintings by The Village Voice art critic Jerry Saltz here. Saltz is a great read. Try it, you just might like it.

Terry Winters

Love this artists' work.  I won't proclaim to know much about him but there is definitely the element of ordering and systems.  Also one word to describe his mark-making is "gauche" - but not (profound, I know!).  Anyways, I think sometimes his paintings seem heavy-handed, seem to feel labored over, but not to the point of being self-conscious.  The prints don't do that though (the element of removal in the printmaking process?)

What I thoroughly enjoy are all the layers that can be sifted through, the sense of the microscopic, as if we get to see the invisible threads that hold our world in place.  But I think his work is thoroughly grounded in what Is, rather than idealized or romanticized.  And though I know he draws from nature and the world around us, I like the impression that his objects are familiar because of their resemblance rather than through their explicit representation of something.  I am reminded of fractals, of light through trees, of cellular organisms, and of the net of interaction that they are involved with- players in a drama, perhaps.  Repetition is obviously part and parcel of his work, again another element found in nature (that is what a fractal is after all).   Anyway, this is an artist that I regularly look at and always come away feeling good about painting.  The tactility, the imperfection and labor (as in the growth of the painting) becomes something I can get involved with and I always get a rush from.  Seems like a somewhat selfish reason to look at his work, but hey, it's my drug of choice.  At some point I want to post work that I hate and let it rip, but that's for another day! Hope you enjoy, please feel free to post a comment.