Black collages, New York 1990-93

These collage paintings were produced in several series, made in New York in the early 1990s. Similar to periods in our very recent past, that was a time of great financial uncertainty as well as marking the start of the first Gulf War, an event that I found particularly abhorrent and distressing. In retrospect, the mood of these works must have derived from those difficult circumstances. Their large scale and gloomy tonality invited immersion and contemplation. They were not, however, paintings made in a conventional manner. Each was a copy of a small watercolor that had been made quite informally. The process of copying allowed me to take myself out of the work as an expressive author. I became a technician, assembling a copy. This was a valuable position in relation to such apparently emotionally-charged works. There was no painting all all done on the surface of these collages. All the paper for each each of them was painted beforehand, as an inventory of black and grey surfaces from which details could be taken and glued to the surface of the canvas. A new inventory of painted paper, produced with new colors, tonalities, and textures, was prepared for each piece and leftover paper was never reused on succeeding collages. In 1993 three of these were shown as part of a one-person exhibition at Tennisport Arts, a Long Island City gallery run by Christian Haub in New York. And then in 2009 four of them were included as the backdrop to a performance of Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel.

Shade, 1990, acrylic painted paper collaged on canvas, 108″x78″

Residue, 1990, acrylic painted paper collaged on canvas, 108″x77″

Trace, 1990, acrylic painted paper collaged on canvas, 108″x78″

Dead, 1990, collage on canvas, 120″x86″

Untitled, 1990, collage on canvas, 112″x84″

Disappear, 1989, collage on canvas, 72″x32″

One-person exhibition at Condeso Lawler Gallery, New York, 1991

   One-person exhibition at Condeso Lawler Gallery, New York, 1991

Sleep, 1992, acrylic painted paper collaged on canvas, 131″x79″

Negative, 1992, acrylic painted paper collaged on canvas, 131″x79″

Eclipse, 1992, acrylic painted paper collaged on canvas, 131″x79″

Bruise, 1992, acrylic painted paper collaged on canvas, 131″x79″

Kanal, 1992, acrylic painted paper collaged on canvas, 131″x79″

Diagram, 1992, acrylic painted paper collaged on canvas, 131″x79″

Error, 1993, acrylic painted paper collaged on canvas, 120″x73″

Burnt, 1993, acrylic painted paper collaged on canvas, 131″x79″

Drawings for Sleep and Negative, 1991, acrylic on paper, each 19″x12.5″

Drawings for Eclipse and Bruise, 1991, acrylic on paper, each 19″x12.5″

Drawings for Kanal and Diagram, 1991, acrylic on paper, each 19″x12.5″

Drawings for Error and Burnt, 1991, acrylic on paper, each 19″x12.5″

Exhibition installation of , Negative, Eclipse, and Sleep at Tennisport Arts, Long Island City, New York, 1993

Exhibition installation of Bloodblack 2, Negative, and Eclipse at Tennisport Arts, Long Island City, New York, 1993

Exhibition installation at Tennisport Arts, Long Island City, New York, 1993

Exhibition installation of Bloodblack 5, and Bloodblack 3 at Tennisport Arts, Long Island City, New York, 1993

Bloodblack collages, New York 1993-95

From 1993-95 I worked on a series of collage paintings called Bloodblack, a word taken from a late Paul Celan poem called “Whorish othertime.” I had been making black paintings and collages for several years and enjoyed the morbid ambiguous connotations of the term. I first made a group of drawings that incorporated accidental processes each concluding with a pour of red paint. As collages, several of these were precisely replicated on a much larger scale using pre-painted paper. In each case the final element of collage was the red layer, cut from one piece of painted paper.

Bloodblack 1, 1994, painted acrylic collage on canvas, 96″x54.5″

 
Bloodblack 2, 1994, painted acrylic collage on canvas, 96″x54.5″

Bloodblack 3, 1994, painted acrylic collage on canvas, 84″x48″

Bloodblack 4, 1994, painted acrylic collage on canvas, 84″x48″

Bloodblack 5, 1994, painted acrylic collage on canvas, 84″x48″

Bloodblack 6, 1994, painted acrylic collage on canvas, 84″x48″

Bloodblack 7, 1994, painted acrylic collage on canvas, 84″x48″x12″

Drawings for Bloodblack 1 and 2, 1994, acrylic on paper, each 14″x8″

Drawings for Bloodblack 3 and 4, 1994, acrylic on paper, each 14″x7″

Drawings for Bloodblack 5 and 6, 1994, acrylic on paper, each 14″x7″

Drawing for Bloodblack 7, 1994, acrylic on paper, 14″x7″