Sarah Walker
16 Nov - 23 Dec 2007
SARAH WALKER
"Collidescape"
In her paintings Sarah Walker attempts to simultaneously absorb vastly different spatial systems—something that the eye and mind are perhaps not constructed to do, but are increasingly being asked to. Her paintings appear to be the residue of natural processes–sedimentation, stratification, and erosion–because her painting technique mimics these processes. Working topographically with paper flat on the floor, she floods the surface with liquid paint which she then proceeds to wipe away, repeating this process again and again. The residue dots each painting’s surface with a pattern of drifting landmass or cloud-like forms. Upon these amorphous shapes Walker builds structures that subdivide and grow in radially creeping spreads.
“The paintings are a distillation of the cumulative forces at work in a wide array of fields, among them geology, psychology, and technology.” Her only rule is to save some artifact from previous layers. “The necessity to continue layering...elicits all manner of strategies for saving: archiving, transparency, transcribing, outlining or otherwise capturing artifacts from every layer. In continually bringing everything forward in time to the present visual moment, I hope to create simultaneity of time and space that can be seen topographically and sequentially.” (Walker, 2007)
In these paintings there are no objects, instead one finds dynamics and processes. The space between events and the signal that permeates this space remains while objects and figure/ ground relationships vanish. All layers, spaces, processes, and dynamics fuse into a larger event; a momentary coalescence of the formless into an associative web.
"Collidescape"
In her paintings Sarah Walker attempts to simultaneously absorb vastly different spatial systems—something that the eye and mind are perhaps not constructed to do, but are increasingly being asked to. Her paintings appear to be the residue of natural processes–sedimentation, stratification, and erosion–because her painting technique mimics these processes. Working topographically with paper flat on the floor, she floods the surface with liquid paint which she then proceeds to wipe away, repeating this process again and again. The residue dots each painting’s surface with a pattern of drifting landmass or cloud-like forms. Upon these amorphous shapes Walker builds structures that subdivide and grow in radially creeping spreads.
“The paintings are a distillation of the cumulative forces at work in a wide array of fields, among them geology, psychology, and technology.” Her only rule is to save some artifact from previous layers. “The necessity to continue layering...elicits all manner of strategies for saving: archiving, transparency, transcribing, outlining or otherwise capturing artifacts from every layer. In continually bringing everything forward in time to the present visual moment, I hope to create simultaneity of time and space that can be seen topographically and sequentially.” (Walker, 2007)
In these paintings there are no objects, instead one finds dynamics and processes. The space between events and the signal that permeates this space remains while objects and figure/ ground relationships vanish. All layers, spaces, processes, and dynamics fuse into a larger event; a momentary coalescence of the formless into an associative web.