Sikkema Jenkins & Co. is pleased to present Off the Wall, an online group exhibition exploring the diverse use of color in the work of William Cordova, Zipora Fried, Brenda Goodman, Arturo Herrera, Sheila Hicks, Vik Muniz, and Erin Shirreff. This exhibition will be on view April 14 through May 15, 2020
From painting and sculpture, to collage and photography, the works featured in this exhibition remind us that color is an essential compositional, structural, and psychological tool. Color is used as a method of building form, evoking emotions, shaping dimensionality, or recalling images and motifs from our collective art history.
Color is integral to the composition and historical context of Vik Muniz’s Metachrome (Cut-Outs, after Henri Matisse and Yves Klein (Pictures of Color). Reflecting on Matisse and Klein’s philosophies of color as a vital force, Muniz recreated their iconic works with pigment and Pantone color samples, respectively. Utilizing these materials emphasizes the autonomous nature of color, as each particle of pigment or scrap of color sample constitute a distinct element within larger fields of color.
Both William Cordova and Erin Shirreff similarly engage color within the composition and visual resonance of their work. Cordova’s collages, untitled (el quinto sayo) and untitled (rumi maki #4), are assembled from reclaimed materials such as feathers, paint chips, and shoe laces. Drawing on Afro-Peruvian cosmologies and ancient Andean visual motifs, Cordova maps his network of painted constellations against a dynamic quilt of color. In Shirreff’s Blue tones overlay, the gradients of blue and white reveal the process of making cyanotypes, a camera-less photographic printing process. Lighter areas reveal the artist’s movements in the studio; one can trace how she obstructed the canvas from natural and artificial light with shapes and objects to create pattern, form, and shadow. Several cyanotypes are then cut, layered, and arranged to form an abstract painterly composition.
For Arturo Herrera, color and collage enable the artist to construct abstract forms and activate space across two-dimensional surfaces. In Night Before Last (6L), the vivid pink of the cut paper contrasts starkly with the white background, bringing to view latent signs and figures within its tangled composition. Herrera’s mixed-media book paintings are a series of found books to which he applies thick brushstrokes of paint and collaged elements. These interventions blur, conceal, and become integrated with the books’ existing covers, forming a hybrid image of painted gestural abstraction and graphic design.
In Brenda Goodman’s work, color is a channel through which new structures and forms are built. Goodman develops her organic geometry from the contrast of light and dark colors; bright greens, yellows, and oranges are shaped against darker shades of brown and black. Her paintings engender new figures and surfaces, creating small worlds of distinct, textured abstraction.
Fried’s large-scale colored-pencil works are meticulously composed of individual strokes, each a distinct, self-contained gesture by the artist’s hand. The physicality of this method, of imprinting color mark by mark, imbues the drawing’s surface with active, vital energy. Warmer tones of brown and orange blend into one another, while vivid, saturated bands of yellow, pink, and green abruptly contrast each another. The cumulative effect is of a luminous landscape composed entirely of color, evoking an intricate spectrum of emotionality through methodical, disciplined abstraction.
For over 60 years, Sheila Hicks has pushed the limits of fiber to explore the ways in which color itself can be both material and subject matter. Voltaire echoes the composition of Fried’s drawings, alternating monochrome threads of linen against one another in bands of deep red and blue. Her sculpture Off the Wall is an intricate web of color and texture, giving color a distinct mass and volume that extends into and engages with the space around it.
