Drawn/Taped/Burned: Abstraction on Paper » Allyson Strafella

Allyson Strafella on Robert Barry

Rachel Nackman — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:08:13 +0000

It has order 1969-70
Robert Barry

It has order

It is always changing

It is affected by other things

It affects other things

It is not confined

It is not in any specific place

It can be present, but go unnoticed

To know of it is to be part of it

On It has order 1969-70
Allyson Strafella

Red Field | Green Field

Start, move, stop: the pleasure of moving ink across the page.

Notes from the conservator:
‘…the tape leaching was definitely not his intention.’

This is no mere axis.
An aerial view is fragmented and not.

Let me reiterate.

Field, land, furrows, flag.

A cloak of everywhere. Of everyday.

Stripping away text, arriving at a line.
Is this yours or mine?

Allyson Strafella on Suzanne Bocanegra

Rachel Nackman — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:08:47 +0000

Lines
standing side by side.
Rows arouse doubt,
—a search
for an exit.

Yet during the performance
in the poppy field,
the crowds stand tall, swaying slightly.
Each figure moves like a pendulum,
bowing to its forces.

The percussionists at the center
work in teams of two
to invent a sound accompaniment.

Moving through the mass
has not been an easy navigation.
But alas, I have found the way out.

Elena del Rivero on Allyson Strafella

Rachel Nackman — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:00:14 +0000

The beauty of Allyson Strafella’s carbon paper drawing process lies not only in the unique work of art that is its product, but also in the way her use of a simple and common duplicating device—carbon paper—calls to mind the most central elements of the art of drawing. Throughout human history—from the ancient times of the Altamira caves, through the Renaissance, to the present—carbon has been a primary tool for the creation of images and text. Using a typewriter, generally the means for creating duplicates with carbon paper, Strafella instead wounds the paper, allowing the carbon to bleed forth in images loaded with timeless
visual meaning.

Allyson Strafella on Richard Tuttle

Rachel Nackman — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 16:00:54 +0000

Thirty-five lines on Step (#35),
Including the presence of this heading
And the spaces between:

A step to where?
Are all 35 necessary to get us there?
I think yes, but not so.
Seemingly informal squares.
Located, they have purpose;
I may never know.

Disintegrating landscape, unloosened.
Pixellated image of landscape?
An imagescape triumphed by larger ground,
Or rearranged by influence from within?

Each particle responds to another
In disregard of how actions appear.

20. Pattern of aleatory thinking.
21. Archaic intuitive calendar.
22. Windows cleared of condensation.

They are moving, not emotionally…
…the marks are moving on the page.

A profile,
A seascape,
A dance pattern?
A refusal to reveal what it is, yet a definition of space.

My eye wants to begin below, arrive above.

Green clay:
Is this the place that I think of?