Courtesy Leslie Smith III
WORDS Caroline Taylor
Working in monochrome, artists featured in monochromatic push their limits conceptually under restriction of a single color. With roots dating back to the Suprematist Composition in Moscow, monochromatic tradition is an important component of the avant-garde of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Influential to the practice, Color Field painters and Minimalists of the mid-twentieth century, such as Mark Rothko, Ellsworth Kelly and Richard Tuttle, developed single-color use – eventually incorporating shaped canvases. With enduring relevance, execution of artworks using a limited palette (today explored in various mediums) references the long tradition from the past while continuing to prove significant to the present.
The three artists included in triumph & disaster’s monochromatic explore the practice from three different angles. Cameron Martin’s meticulous process presents a contemporary use of traditional landscape, evoking a sense of non-specific nostalgia. Leslie Smith III updates the use of the shaped canvas with paintings showing his understanding of spatial relationships – the restricted color palette allowing the strong and intentional lines of his constructions to serve as the composition. Referencing media of pop culture, Javier Barrios’ cut-mylar collages move between fact and fantasy, confronting the great philosophical questions of mankind.
Artists included: Javier Barrios, Cameron Martin, Leslie Smith III
monochromatic runs April 3 – April 27, 2014 at 505 Cloverdale Road, Unit 102. For info visit www.triumphdisastergallery.com
Q&A with Javier Barrios
MADE Paper: Your background is international, with Guatemalan and Mexican heritage,
raised in Norway, and currently based in New York. Does exposure to many
different cultures inform your artwork?
JB: I think that my multicultural background somehow has formed me into this
restless and rootless person and I am sure it´s also very present in my
artwork. My project is very much about exploration and movement, so I
guess there is a direct link between my background and practice.
MP: What or who influenced you to become an artist?
JB: I have always had an attraction towards the visual ever since I was a kid,
either it was through drawing or by being fascinated by images in books.
But it was not until I was 20 years old I took a conscious decision of
actually pursuing a career as an artist. I wan living in San Miguel De
Allende in Mexico which is a city that has a big artistic community. Here
I was exposed to many different artists and medias and was also the place
where I picked up a painting brush for the first time, something that felt
very natural at the time and still does.
MP: Taking reference from many different medias (films, internet, TV, etc), your
work highlights tendencies in contemporary culture. Your four works
presented in monochromatic were made specifically for the exhibition how
did the limitation of color affect your practice?
JB: We are bombarded with visual imagery in our daily life through technology
that surrounds us constantly. The last year I have been pushing my work in
a more monochromatic and simplistic direction, as I see there is a value
in stripping down the work. It is almost as if the cleaner the work is,
the more it stands out from our surrounding. Almost like a counter
reaction in the same way the minimalists worked in the 60`s. I have not
found any limitations in working on a more monochromatic way, actually i
have found it to be the opposite as it has enriched the work.
Q&A with Leslie Smith III
MADE Paper: What or who encouraged you to be an artist?
Leslie Smith: My father is a photographer. I grew up following him around, learning the trade. He also drew, so I always had paper and materials around. I played Classical and Jazz piano early on. Not sure how that ties in directly, but when I got tired of performing and moved away from music I started taking Art more seriously. There were several individuals who supported me, teachers etc. Ultimately, I think it was the free Art Museums in Washington DC. The National Gallery, Smithsonian, Hirshhorn Museum and Phillips Collection, although you have to pay for that one, gave me the opportunity to see art from many movements. The Museums offered me the opportunity to experience the scale and power of both representational and abstract art; they gave me something real to aspire to.
MP: Who are your major influences?
LS: If I think about the artists who I continually find myself revisiting despite shifts within my studio practice, I’d say my major influences are Fra Angelico, Giorgio de Chirico, Francis Picabia, Phillip Guston and Amy Sillman. It’s Hard not to make a list a mile long. I mean I have numerous contemporaries that I look at to stay abreast to contemporary themes and variations within the artistic dialogue I perceive myself responding to; I’m not sure I’d consider them “Major” influences. Then again, I guess time will tell.
MP: When did you start working on shaped canvases and how did this affect your practice, and particularly, did the non-traditional shape inform your color palette (and restriction of)?
LS: I started working on shaped canvases in 2012; my first attempts were in 2010 when I realized I hadn’t constructed a creative mechanism or process that would parlay content into information that could directly inform the characteristics’ of the shapes I would design and paint on. My venture into shaped canvases was in fact due to shifts in my studio practice dealing with material specificity. If I wanted paint to function illusionistically as well as to substantiate the object presence of a stretched canvas, then the canvas itself was something that I could reconsider. Perhaps considered differently than the status quo, i.e., rectilinear structures, and additionally different than the shaped canvases of the late 60’s and 70’s. The role of color in my paintings shifted as well. Working within a monochromatic color space was inevitable. It offers me the ability to be as physically expressive with the paint as I might need to be in order to articulate a particular emotive or perceptual or space while allowing that passage of paint to maintain a monolithic presence, as a result of its color being connected to the entire painting as an isolated event.