punchy visual contrast between flat planes and projected
volumes; instead the viewer can barely discern the remnants
of figure-ground relationships amidst the more subtle and
confounding array of surface textures, mottled strokes of
color, and the bleeding edges of tentative geometries.
In Mosaic, the emphatically
figurative
becomes
stubbornly abstract. Yet
the most scrupulous detail
of all brings us back to
reality: the crackled field of
desiccated, peeling paint.
What we are looking at
has suffered the wages of
time and human neglect:
the irrefutable empirical
evidence is there for us
to see. But behold the
scintillating minutiae of the
commonplace: thousands
of pieces of lifting paint are
transformed into tessarae.
Tiny glints of white ��� actual
losses on the signboard ���shimmer against the colored
flecks of ochre, red, and pale blue. The craquleur of layered
paint -- color upon white, white upon white primer-- erupts
in a rhythmic dance across and into the surface. New
England meets Byzantium and the eye is confounded, the
HYLAND
