Drawn/Taped/Burned: Abstraction on Paper » Frank Badur

Frank Badur on Carl Andre

Rachel Nackman — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:38:32 +0000

The “disparity of the similar“ (adapted from Viktor Shklovsky) that is so significant for Carl Andre’s complex body of work is also evident in these three small red and black panels. It is quite possible that a quick, fleeting glance will capture three identical images – yet are they identical in size and color? As with Carl Andre’s spatial floor sculptures, this two-dimensional triptych calls for an active, differentiating viewer who takes time for a close-up inspection. Only through an intensive comparison do the three pieces reveal their individuality. The probing eye moves across three dissimilar, rising diagonals – organic separations between the red and black forms. The color balance successively favors the black; irregular brush strokes and restrained textures reference an intuitive creative act. These intimate panels remind me of early Suprematist paintings, small abstract icons whose spiritual energy and visual poetry hold the viewer enraptured.

In 1962, during a conversation with Hollis Frampton, Carl Andre said: The innovation in twentieth-century Western painting, Constructivism, provides the suggestion of an aesthetic which could be the basis for a kind of plastic poetry which retained the qualities of both poetry and painting. I am experimenting toward that end, anyway.

When looking at the early work of Carl Andre, which unfortunately hardly exists anymore, these three red and black panels must be considered almost the only examples of his drawing. I sense in these works on paper a groping for three-dimensionality. They seem to reveal the longing for a tactile quality – a look at his red and ochre painted wood sculpture Hourglass of 1962 seems to verify this assumption.

Translation by Jörg W. Ludwig

Jill Baroff on Frank Badur

Rachel Nackman — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:41:04 +0000

When do black and white become equivalents? What an idea: that black and white are the same! When black does not divide, but holds a space steady. When it does not break from white to become an image, but rests in animated stillness like a Ryoanji stone. Sequence infers movement from one moment to the next, but here, there is no individual moment; there is only the whole seen from varying perspectives in time.

Frank Badur on Sara Sosnowy

Rachel Nackman — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:59:57 +0000

Sara Sosnowy’s Gold Drawing # 77 evokes the fact that the value system of any society is shaped and defined by a continuous process of cultural interchange. Sosnowy’s very intensive work on paper appears, on the one hand, as a subtle reference to the reductive work of the French artist Yves Klein. On the other hand, her delicate drawing opens the door to intercultural dialogue with India’s ritualistic tantric art, the principal quality of which lies in its complex creative freedom. In this art form we encounter small colorful gouaches on paper, as well as abstract diagrams visualizing complex principles of cosmic order. Vacillating between crude imperfection and utter sophistication, often of extreme simplicity and touching sensuality, these works are always intent on creating a spontaneous relationship between artist and beholder. It is not the here and now of an immediate reality that is being interpreted but a world beyond. It is in this sense – as an image beyond images – that I view Sosnowy’s energy-laden Gold Drawing # 77. The vibrant “all-over” of the golden circles, a form as abstract as universal, presupposes almost automatically the deep ultramarine blue background. The congenial imprecision of the gently haptic dots bears witness to their individual process-related creation and to their autonomy as individual parts, which in their multitude form a harmonious whole. It seems as if the artistic result has come about quite effortlessly, its intuitive verity unimpaired by any intellectual deliberation.

Translation by Jörg W. Ludwig