Joshua Aster "So I Went to a Place" @ LA >< ART

So many interesting paintings to look at in this show, it was an overwhelming reminder of the infinitude of  abstract painting (certainly a strand of its history), which is to say one marked more by process than product.  To consider these works on formal terms alone would be to be lost for days in a labyrinth, one I'm assuming the artist knows well.  How it corresponds to the current proliferation and access of information and images seems clear, especially as certain works bend toward a more digital structure in the marks and the structure; certainly the installation reinforces this notion.

Because the paintings were not all available for intimate viewing (consider the ones in the upper rows, way out of reach), I began to think about the grouping as a whole installation rather than  discrete, individual parts, in which case I was left with more questions than answers, which might actually be a good thing, again a process, inquiry, and not so much a statement/argument here.  All of that side, such a gridded layout of works lends itself to the features of a printed page or possibly a film sequence (a series of evolving images), again because many paintings were inaccessible; there were a few I would have liked to have seen closer,  if only in a book or a slideshow, which seems also to suggest a reason to memorialize such a body of work.