terrain: twain

In reproduction these works could almost be from the same artist. First we notice the austere middle gray and the lines that fall haphazardly, or meander desultorily, across the mostly uniform picture plane. Layers have been applied, then covered over, then partially erased again, built up, rubbed away, with all of this activity straining to reveal . . . nothing much, it turns out. These works are a kind of action painting—or action photography, if such a thing can exist—in which actions are repudiated much of the time, perhaps because they were half-hearted in the first place, or perhaps because, although process counts, results themselves are suspect.

But of course the paintings of Christopher Wool are large affairs, ab-ex large, made of enamel and ink (he silkscreens) on linen. Alone or in series, they dominate the gallery space and overwhelm the viewer. Anthony Pearson, on the other hand, keeps his pictures small, in the neighborhood of five by seven inches, so that one has to come up close and look hard. They are products of the darkroom, solarized silver gelatin photographs of drawings from his own hand. Importantly, they are almost always grouped with a sculpture, in repeatable installations that Pearson calls “arrangements.” One confronts a chair-sized sculpture of bronze in the front, and two photographs, matted and framed, on the wall behind it. Image and object correspond to varying degrees. Lines echo, forms nearly match, or there might be a similar appearance of patination. In fact the photographs I have posted are not intended to stand alone, but are details of two such arrangements.

When we allow ourselves to ignore otherwise essential considerations of scale and context, we are free to examine these works as instances of a common, though by no means ubiquitous, strain within today's abstraction. Each work derives from a process that one senses has been thoughtfully organized and deliberately performed, but the end result strikes one nevertheless as tentative, searching, and unresolved, as if the artist did not so much finish the work as abandon it in the final stages of production. It seems to be a way of saying: okay, that’s enough, there's no more progress to be made here. The piece might not be quite right, or quite finished, but nothing in the world ever is.

anthony pearson

from the installation: untitled (pour arrangement), 2010, solarized silver gelatin photograph