![]() The light that shines through the layers of Morris’s paintings may remind some of the screens that increasingly mediate our lives. Its lingering presence reaffirms the frontality of the picture, while complicating the interplay of spatial registers generated by varying hue, opacity, translucency, and animated by the carefully unleashed caprice of Morris’s brushstrokes. Although never completely occluded, the oval is differently revealed by the squares and rectangles placed across it. The same motif forms the basis of the Ghost series, a group of large paintings begun this summer. Visible through the improvised patchwork of Pearled and Pasted (2016) is a large suspended oval. ![]() The result is a luminous clarity, even a kind of innocence, but one whose affirmation is simultaneously deconstructed, with formal relationships teased apart to reveal subtle contradictions and complexities. Opacities and translucencies are overlaid and juxtaposed to create an image in which space moves through colour and colour through space. Morris conceives of painting as an art of layering. Particularly since the mid-nineties, when she began her innovative ‘clearing’ paintings, Morris’s work has formed a bridge between a lyrical tradition originating in Abstract Expressionism and the current concerns of younger generations of abstract painters. All are part of her exploration of abstract painting that stretches back over forty years. Some are amongst the most complex she has made in recent years, others the leanest. Mali Morris’s new paintings are vivid, playful and generous.
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