Alt249852701

Two 3'x6' Panels, relating as a diptych. Oil and Acrylic over panel.

I have built two panels in attempt at using them to function as a diptych. Each diptych is 3’ x 6’, giving the total appearance of the painting to be nearly a 6’ x 6’ square when each is situated adjacent to one another, 1/4” apart. The surface of the panel will be 2” away from the wall when displayed in a gallery situation. No canvas will be used. I am painting on two panels that are gessoed over.

The idea I am working with serves to accomplish several agendas, somehow, I am attempting that those ideas should be coherent with one another when the painting is completed and viewed. I am interested in the way Frank Stella was able to collapse the picture plane and create an entirely flat painting where, the subject of the painting (being black and white stripes), was able to flatten the surface entirely that the canvas itself was brought into attention and the painting now almost became object-like. I believe that painting in a constrained setting, such as inside a square or rectangle, can only accomplish so much in terms of the illusion of viewing. With my painting in using a diptych, some of the elements on one panel will coincide with the other side, while other elements will be limited to only one side, even reacting to the edge as a sort of impassable wall between the two panels.

Being interested in how topographical maps or maps in general work, I am attempting to create a painting where the topographical nature of an aerial perspective come to play in painting where for centuries the landscape viewed from ground level is taken into account. In other words, to create a painting where instead of classical landscape is done, I am using aerial perspective of an imaginary landscape I have created in my mind. The rendering of the landscape will resemble fragments of glacier-like objects. My use of the glacier comes from my belief that glaciers were unreachable (or were a rare topic to consider) at the time of renaissance painting so they were rarely painted. This landscape is alien and consists of the same kinds of shapes, repeating over and over, which in using them in a topographical way, will hopefully create a pretty interesting result. The two elements of aerialness and glacier-likeness will combine in a shattering of the picture plane, where instead of being flat on the surface, the elements will conceptually weigh down the surface, being like a glacier weighing through a canyon.

The colors used will resemble land-like tones, I’m currently envisioning green to yellow palate, browns, greys, with hues of blue to white for glacier elements. The topographical components being color coded on a typical map, should take on a similar look my painting, but I may choose colors uncorresponding to the real color key on a functional map. The nature that the work will react to the panels being close to one another calls to attention that the canvas is apparent in the work, it is not an illusion of space inside a square, the square is the canvas that the work will react to. This calls attention to the canvas being there, which eliminates the attempt that I am using painting to make a “window” into a scene. This is important in my work because I am making the audience aware of their presence in relation to the painting, where their distance and position standing in front of the work will be apparent to them in situation to it. That will make them realize that the painting goes into the panels, works with the panels, like the tension between the aerial perspective working with the ground level perspective of the glacier-like objects.

This proposal is what I am interested in working with because maps do not exist without a landscape and a landscape, never before seen, can be navigated successfully with a map which is just a reference to a place it attempts to represent. It is as if the map doesn’t really exist in the first place, because they are just marks that represent something it cannot see. That represents how I show that the painting is not a window into a fantasy space, rather, it is a painting on a canvas where the canvas exists as part of the painting, that in turn, suggests the work is flat, returning to Stella’s version of the flat painting that ended the era of illusionistic space.