10/03/2014
The eleven paintings by Oli Sihvonen in this exhibition are probably the least known by the artist, but quite possibly his most important series of paintings as they are a culmination of his decades of thinking about and examining visual perception through the use of reductive forms and color. This is the first time that most have ever been exhibited and the first time all have been presented as an exploration of the subject of the artist’s two grants in the 1980s from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and Gottlieb Foundation to create movement in paintings. They conflate the elements he developed in his better-known and earlier series, including “ellipses”, “grids” and “ladders”. However, throughout much of his career, Sihvonen wanted to capture time in paintings and he did so by focusing on the temporality of such things as movement, beat and rhythm. Interested in the mathematical principle of Set Theory, he applied that to painting, with his reductive elements each comprising a set. By repeating each element within a set, Sihvonen developed a beat and pattern that amplified the set. By combining different sets, he generated a sense of randomness that conveyed both the concept of chance and time. Not only does one see in these paintings blocks of vibrant and angled color bracketing and defining thin black and white stripes and pinstripes, but the overall feeling is they are vibrational and full of energy. Compositions are activated by the lines with their alternating pattern and variations in width, creating both depth and movement from the layering of pattern on pattern and challenging visual perception.