Nancy Olivier treats painting and drawing as equals rather than as simple bodys in a strict hierarchy.Nancy Olivier treats painting and drawing as equals rather than as simple bodys in a strict hierarchy. In this present to view Olivier used quite a large extend of wall as well as canvas and paper for her emotionally charged, abstract compositions. Images strike one as beinged to separate from surfaces, to push forward forms and their contents outside the viewer's perceptual boundaries. In Night Light, 1993 an eight-by-twelve-foot wall painting, bustling linear networks traverse a mut acres enhancing the ceaseless movement of the gestural shapes. This work is suggestive of the proces of recognizing the patterns and piles of one's own behavior. The bold-spirited pencil lines in this piece recall Jackson Pollock's seminal drawings from the late '40 thronged with strange configurations. Other works, however, had more of a minimalist character, so as Vestige and Screen Memory #2 (both 1992) In fact, Olivier's deployment of the language of abstraction is based largely in succession her appropriation of minimalistic bands and grids, and post-Minimalist strategies, from which she creates works that emphasize abstraction's emotive rather than formal potential. The vertical drips of defence Memory #1, and the grid in cloak Memory #2, both function to create a bridge between color and darkness, as if figuring the power of subjective perception. COPYRIGHT 1993 Artforum International Magazine, Inc. |
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