Op Posits a Tract
February 28th, 2009Xylor Jane opened her third solo show at CANADA last week. Based in Massachusetts, but from San Francisco, the last place I saw her work in NYC was at Deitch Projects, where it was included in Constraction, curated by Kathy Grayson.
All of the new paintings are on wood panel, and most are square in shape. Each hosts grid systems of spectral color that build fields of shimmering and vibrating shapes, or tightly periodic cellular units and patterns. The latter approach, seen in Gates, one of the strongest pieces, is like a perpetually repeating Tetris game filtered through a broken record/ broken record/ broken record/ broken record.
The geometric incandescence of these paintings beacons you toward them, and they tease you with promise of pattern, inviting and luring you into the flickering fields to track the patterns, to see where and when repetition occurs. And as you begin to perceive the formulas that foster repetition, you begin to detect numerical forms rendered in round pixels of color, usually bold and from the tube, or iridescent and mixed with silver. Looking closer, you notice the neatly drafted grid lines spanning the panel surface. And closer still, you notice tiny handwritten characters, usually numbers, which perhaps guide the artist through these dense matrices of Skittles and braille. This gives these painters’ paintings some sugar for Conceptual-minded viewers, because those eggheads get a chance to peek into the thought process that generated the paintings.
Some paintings reflect themselves: in a binary manner, the left side mirrors the right, or top to bottom [(or vice versa) (or vice versa), respectively]. Others unfold into quadrants, each reflecting its border neighbors. This relationship between quadrants restricts randomness, chance, and arbitrary decisions. The pixels were plotted according to a system, and repeat in neighboring quadrants, reflexively bound and determined to their location.
But how does Xylor Jane decide on her sequences of colors? According to the artist, the ROYGBIV spectrum coincides with calendar dates and prime numbers. Some paintings even scroll lists of prime numbers. I don’t know exactly how she connects the numbers and dates to colors, but it is apparent that she has a system, and that is good enough for me. The paintings function to track and document passage of time, or progressions of numbers. (How great that this show follows on the heels of the recent show and review of On Kawara’s One Million Years, experientially tedious but historically necessary.) Thus, the paintings gradually reveal both sequence and development, yet they also preclude development within themselves, because the grid/quadrant/reflection rules restrict all ranges of variation possible. Each section can be only what the others determine it to be.
They make you dizzy and confused, and never settled with your perception of the painting. Unable to conclusively locate their edges, we are handicapped; the painting might as well be moving on its own. The optical dazzle identifies these paintings as Op, and therefore psychedelic. (David Rimanelli wrote in Artforum (May 2007) about Op art and 1960s psychedelia.) On a trippy vibe, the paintings reach for otherworldy engagement. But they simultaneously keep a foot in another extraterrestrial system, that being mathematics. Math is prior to perception and its independent relations persist whether or not we are paying attention. Xylor’s work contorts to straddle both psychedelic para-perception and rational epi-perception. The paintings are like talismans of extraempirical dimensions. Maybe that’s why the show is called N.D.E., standing for Near Death Experience: the show takes us to the precipice of alternative realities.
In that same Artforum article, David Rimanelli designates the apparent Op resurgence as a “blip.” But is there a substantial Op art revolution? Constraction was just once example. Deitch offers another with the current Ben Jones show, and earlier projects by Assume Vivid Astro Focus (Happy Birthday, Eli!). Painter Aaron Johnson uses op patterns. Ara Peterson’s painted wood sculptures induce vertigo as much as wonder. And up-and-coming David Malek opens a show next week that looks likely to Op all the place.
