R.H. QUAYTAMN – AN EVENING, CHAPTER 32
2018-05-28The core of this chapter was comprised of twenty-two paintings on two walls spanning 35,56 meters, intersecting at a 45-degree angle. At the apex, where the two walls nearly meet, hung two silkscreened photographic reproductions of 16th century paintings by Flemish artist Otto van Veen (1556-1629) titled “The Persian Women“ and “Amazons and Scythians “The Creation of the Sauromats”. Although An Evening, Chapter 32 was initially determined according to an architectural plan of the Beethoven frieze, the paintings were just as much meant to stand alone. Their unity in that installation was based on three factors: their identical dimension; their unusual installation on two walls in one straight line; and finally the black lacquered wedge that spans eleven paintings on the right.
The struggle to force these paintings into line, so to speak, was difficult and uncertain until the day I finished the installation. I realized that unlike a similar frieze of twenty-two paintings measuring 94,1 x 152,4 cm each that I made for Morning, Chapter 30, at MOCA, Los Angeles, these Secession paintings did not hold together quite as seamlessly as the previous ones had. In An Evening, Chapter 32, each painting would claim its bounded quality and seemed content not to converse with its neighbor. Once the lacquer had been applied I also began to appreciate their individual geometries as constricted by the black lacquer rather than unified by their collective shape discerned from a distance.
Opposite – An Evening, Chapter 32 / An Evening, Chapter 32, 2017
Exhibition runs through to June 2nd, 2018
Galerie Buchholz
Fasanenstraße 30
10719 Berlin
Germany
