dayoutlast: Wanda Koop "In Absentia" @ Night Gallery

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

Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Wanda Koop "In Absentia" @ Night Gallery

The above image appears courtesy of the gallery website; the image below is one that I took with my iPhone SE, the same camera or similar that I have used since starting this blog (the point is integrated with our phone and our larger perception of information these days). Notice the difference in color quality, and the discrepancies don't stop there. These paintings are interesting for their subtle treatment of painted surface as well as what they obliquely reference in terms of presence, void, and painted history. Somehow, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still come to mind immediatlely. The first two I'm assuming are obvious enough; the latter in terms of hard-edged compositions "peels" in place of a more organic one. Color issues and other associations aside, I hope you had a chance to see these. As the works and the title suggest, being there and not being there is what's at stake. More could be said, but, then again, I think they speak for themselves.