blackbird online journal spring 2002 vol.1 no. 1

 

MARK HARRIS | Work and Commentary

Cut Paper Work

Bluegrass Geometry, 1997, 48" x 48", acrylic paint, woven cut paper.


As part of this painting method I have wanted to complicate the vocabulary of gestural abstraction with inappropriate ingredients. It's a way of deviating from the recipes of abstraction. Elements from '60s psychedelia, printed textiles, from craft processes like weaving and wood inlay, from tawdry '50s design, from hippy furnishings, are incorporated as motifs of a gestural vocabulary. This mixes a canonical gestural language with some of the visual paraphernalia from recent culture including visual languages tainted as having second-class status. The possibilities of impurity and incorrectness fascinate me, especially as tools to get under the protective aura of that abstraction's claim to ontological authenticity.

 


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