The juxtaposition, for the first time in her career, of photography and drawing within the same, sometimes large scale works marks a radical departure for Denise Green. But the move doesn’t come completely from left field as the veteran New York-based Australian painter has spent the best part of her career probing issues of memory, representation and the visual sign. In fact, seen within the perspective of her involvement with the influential 1970s critical theory journal, Semiotext(e), and the significant impact of her work in the Whitney’s 1979 New Image Painting exhibition, this departure almost seems inevitable. That said, between her theory-oriented beginnings and her more recent painterly achievements Green’s work evolved along highly subjective, often symbolist pathways, and thanks to this trajectory her latest explorations of different supports are relieved of any kind of dry reductivism. On the contrary, abstract drawn marks segue to diffused photographic representations with elegance and ease and with a poetic logic.
Denise Green: Paintings, Drawings, Photographs on view through February 21 at 547 West 27th Street, between 10th and 11th avenues, New York City, 212-677-452
This post was ARTCRITICAL PICK in the week of February 15, 2015
print