"Chapter 12: iamb" at Miguel Abreu Gallery
New York
December 14, 2008 – February 1, 2009 R. H. Quaytman produces her paintings in thematic, chronologically numbered series, which she deems "chapters." Evoking the organization of a book, her approach playfully engages with an archival structure: a self-imposed system of producing, naming, and organizing (her last exhibition presented a chapter of paintings "filed" on a storage rack) which critiques the archive’s viability as a way of transmitting meaning.

These thirteen painted, gessoed, and silk-screened panels from "Chapter 12: iamb" (all works 2008) variously explore the motif of a painting lit by a lamp: Some employ a strategically fuzzy, post-Gerhard Richter, unfocused photograph-as-painting trope, others purely abstract grid compositions, and still others occupy a level of representation somewhere in between. What pushes them beyond a merely cerebral application of theoretical and conceptual rigor is both their exquisite construction (the beveled edge of the panels, the balanced smattering of residue from the painting and printing process on several works, and the painstaking, stylized impasto of others) and their optic charge. Whether through Op patterning or sprinklings of diamond dust, the works invite one to linger, although, when taken as a whole, such lingering is difficult, even impossible. As a group, they volley the viewer from one to another in linear fashion around the gallery, exhibiting a tension between the optic and the haptic, between pleasure and discomfort.

Chapter 12: iamb (Fresnell lens) begins the chapter, showing a light that emerges through a blue ground — possibly a depiction of the painfully bright beam for which it is named. As are the beginnings of all chapters in Quaytman’s oeuvre, it is rotated 90 degrees. Lying on its side, as though conceding the archive’s impotence, the work surpasses its sober theoretical underpinning — mining the archive can be fruitful, indeed.

"R. H. Quaytman" originally appeared in the April 2009 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' April 2009 Table of Contents.