dayoutlast: Michael Heizer "New Paintings and Sculpture" @ Gagosian

dayoutlast is a record of my direct engagement with mostly contemporary art, mostly Los Angelean.

As this blog has evolved since its 2010 inception, so has my perspective. What I once perceived as central within the investigation was what was central, literally, within the photographic frame that I shared here. While still an important consideration, such thinking has also given way to more peripheral considerations, ones also accompanied occasionally by text (written manifestation of thought) and the oscillations between them. What's missing here are larger unknowns surrounding issues of presentation and representation; the amount of time and space it actually takes to accomplish such first-hand observations; and the quandaries between documentation and interpretation.

Despite my attempt to communicate here with image and text what is essential in some respect about the artwork, neither representation should ever be considered a substitution for the primary viewing experience. Of course, occasionally there are exceptions.

Most of the time, these posts are merely remnants---residual fragments---from my last day out.

--Justin Lowman

Saturday, December 10, 2016

Michael Heizer "New Paintings and Sculpture" @ Gagosian | Beverly Hills

Wet Painting no. 2, 2016

Paints on canvas with silkscreen

107 x 91 1/4 x 2 1/2 inches

1 of 4 Hard Edge Etchings, 2016

4 Etchings with aquatint on Somerset Satin 500gsm paper

24 x 21 1/8 x 1 1/8 inches

Prints recall cats fighting in a bag. Lines of contained movement. Shapes painting reveals organic, fluid process in relation to surface of stone. Lines as edges (shifting planes suggesting shifting plates). So, animation and scale with remnants of Ab Ex emotionalism.

Wet Painting no. 1, 2016

Paints on canvas with silkscreen

109 1/8 x 90 5/8 x 2 1/2 inches

Linseed wrinkle. Fragments.

Fragment A, 2016

Granitic rock and weathering steel

113 1/4 x 172 1/2 x 83 1/2 inches

Black Diorite Negative Wall Sculpture, 1992-94

5.7 ton black diorite / granite in weathered steel frame

88 1/4 x 76 3/8 x 31 inches

Surface and depth. Gray stone largely homogenous and regular at long distance.

Wet Painting no. 6, 2016

Paints on canvas with silkscreen

111 1/4 x 90 3/4 x 2 1/2 inches

Wet Painting no. 5, 2016

Paints on canvas with silkscreen

108 3/4 x 85 x 2 1/2 inches

Degrees of landscape. From the literal to the figurative. Real to ideal. Levels of abstraction. Organic to geometric. Colors that move from neutral, earth tones to ethereal and back. Puzzle as a noun and a verb like painting. Puzzling. An activity AND an object.

Wet Painting no. 3, 2016

Paints on canvas with silkscreen

115 3/8 x 86 1/8 x 2 1/2 inches

Wet Painting no. 2, 2016

Paints on canvas with silkscreen

107 x 91 1/4 x 2 1/2 inches

Wet Painting no. 4, 2016

Paints on canvas with silkscreen

109 7/8 x 91 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches

Wet Painting no. 7, 2016

Paints on canvas with silkscreen

109 3/4 x 89 x 3 inches

Hard Edge Painting no. 2, 2015-2016

Polyvinyl latex on canvas

108 1/4 x 95 x 2 1/4 inches

Color follows form. Curve gives way to straight angles. Origami. Crane. Folding/unfolding planes. How the quality and incident of light interacts with flat planes that suggest volume.

Hard Edge Painting no. 5B, 2015-2016

Polyvinyl latex on canvas

106 3/4 x 88 x 2 1/4 inches

Hard Edge Painting no. 4, 2015-2016

Polyvinyl latex on canvas

108 1/2 x 92 1/2 x 2 1/4 inches

Hard Edge Painting no. 3, 2015-2016

Polyvinyl latex on canvas

108 1/4 x 95 x 2 1/4 inches

Hard Edge Painting no. 5B, 2015-2016

Polyvinyl latex on canvas

106 3/4 x 88 x 2 1/4 inches

Speckled canvas, apparently homogenous like the granite rock, variegates upon close inspection. Things, per usual, are not always as they seem.

Pictorial despite the attempt to literalize with dimension or remove illusion with painted effect. Somewhere between these poles, dependent on change of position and therefore point of view, lies versions of the truths.

Emotion/Logic (fluid, dynamic and/or not).