R. H. Quaytman’s Morning: Chapter 30 has an assertive, unrelenting horizontal presence, but it really represents a kind of constellation – coextensive with the larger universe of associations that populate Quaytman’s entire body of work. That constellation may be investigated in the second, smaller gallery space that precedes the larger space – dominated by the title work, notwithstanding the fact that it’s still only a single wall amongst four. The viewer is drawn irresistibly into this gallery, with the seeming horizon line of the work compelling us forward – then making us move from one side to another, to the left or right from any random starting point and/or left to right and right to left, as we scan the continuous succession of panels, and around; finally pulling us back into the gallery, where we may survey other works. We’re aware of the continuity, but also aware of what comes next. It reads as an abstracted landscape (which it almost certainly is – consciously inspired by Michael Heizer’s Double Negative – a kind of dual acknowledgment and contextualization of both the MOCA siting and Heizer’s double trench) – foreground, horizon/objective and sky – but transmitted in multiple takes with subtly shifting vantage points over a period of time, finally resituating that viewpoint in a slightly different place.

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
MOCA Grand Avenue
250 S. Grand Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Show runs thru February 6, 2017