Time is but one essence of
Laura Paulini’s art. In the richly textured works
she exhibits here, she spins accumulations of marks into
gorgeously mesmerizing patterns, moments that she compounds
into something so much more. She relies on a combination
of trust in her materials, in a structuring parameter of
time, and in a John Cage-like respect for chance.
Like a classic work of conceptual art,
Paulini sets down instructions for her series. Each must
be created in a single day, or a variant thereof, in
which she imprints a mark over the surface. Acting almost
like a scribe, she uses a paint covered panel as her
tablet, and employs a variety of ordinary implements – chopstick,
dental pick, drinking straw, rose stem – to create
marks upon it, line by line. The smaller the tool, the
more time is rhythmically encoded in the surface.
A vast, wonderfully subtle range can be
found in her white squares, but the integrity of each
piece is located more directly in their making. There
is something meditative about her process – the
tool functions something like a mantra, a thing repeated
to a point of purity and abstraction. The artist’s
commitment to the practice translates into waves of texture
that definitely communicate a peace of mind. These paintings
are like moments – hours in the making – of
respite in an over-stimulated world. |
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