Maddox Gallery Los Angeles is delighted to present ‘Inner Eye,’ a curated exhibition celebrating the legacy of the seminal Light and Space Movement through new works by Ruth Pastine and Sali Muller.
Emerging from Southern California in the 1960’s, the Light and Space movement was pioneered by artists such as Larry Bell, John McCracken and Mary Corse. Their fascination with the diffused atmosphere and glowing light of Los Angeles produced works that captured the city’s luminosity through their use of colour, light and space, offering a shifting of perspectives and new emotional encounters.
Decades later, we see these conceptual philosophies continue in the practices of Ruth Pastine and Sali Muller. ‘Inner Eye’ offers a unique opportunity to feature two female artists from different generations and locales who continue to explore how the study of colour, light and space alter our perceptions and heighten our awareness of self.
The transformational and elusive qualities of light and colour manifest themselves uniquely within each piece presented here. In Pastine’s Presence Absence Series, we are suffused in ethereal, radiant light generating through vertical bands of colour. Painted during this challenging past year, their pureness of form and immediate experience encourage not only a reverie of the mind, but also a restoration of the spirit. A more saturated glow extends from the depths of the colour spectrum in Red, Orange-Yellow, Green, Blue-Violet, Spectrum Quartet. Working primarily with three complimentary colour systems as the core of her practice throughout her career, Pastine embraces a spontaneous and rigorous process of painting colour upon colour on canvas to seek out their infinitely possible chromatic interactions. Taking in the visual phenomenon of these works, conscious attention of the unknown takes hold, and the existential perception of self is questioned.
Perceptions are similarly considered with the interplay of light and movement in Muller’s Down the Rabbit Hole and Abziehbild sculptural forms. Their transparent surfaces are treated with a mirrored foil that both absorb and refract light, creating fragments of abstracted reflections. These altered images not only question our own physical presence, but also how we are seen and, perhaps more importantly, how we wish to be seen. Further illusions are created through shifting waves of light that ripple and reflect in Ultra Contemporary Landscape. As we attempt to coalesce an image on the expansive aluminum surface, hints of a seascape emerge through the shimmering vibrant hues and a shift of both body and mind takes place.
The works presented also touch upon the artists’ shared interest in spatial dimensions. Beyond the actual space we inhabit, the physical relationships between the works themselves and between the viewer and the works are akin to a choreographed dance. Der Moment in dem sich alles dreht, Muller’s immersive installation, offers such an invitation. Comprised of slowly rotating acrylic panels treated with reflective foil, we are summoned through a meandering path of refracted light, colour and shadows. An ever-expanding space is created whenever the light hits the surface and disperses beyond the piece. A physiological transformation occurs as we sync ourselves to its rhythm, weaving our bodies and slowing our steps.
Pastine’s sublime Core, Depths and Color Space Series take us on a more emotional communion with space through the study on the phenomenology of colour, the primary focus of her decades-long practice. Unpredictable combinations from the complementary colour systems create luminous cavernous dimensions that throb and pulsate, swelling and constricting continuously with every beat of the heart. With its impressive scale, Blue (Red), Core Series communicates directly to us by extending beyond its two-dimensional boundaries, simultaneously pulling us to into its infinite void while also engulfing us in its chromatic veil. The powerful intensity of oil on paper created in the Depths Series is not only striking to the eye, but also penetrating to the marrow of our bones. And the symbiotic relationship between the Yellow Violet, Color Space Series offers a remarkable spatial tension with contrasting colours running inversely down their edges. Pastine’s arresting paintings, thus, become spaces for contemplation with each canvas offering a moment of respite from the outside world.
‘Inner Eye’ invites us to reconsider ideals about the subjectivity of perception and elements of the sublime through the elusive qualities of colour, light and space. Our bodies and spirits are transformed, as the works of Ruth Pastine and Sali Muller become conduits bridging the visible to the invisible, tangible to the intangible, the finite to the infinite. They bring unexpected encounters and through their dialogue with us and one another, may enlighten, confound or open up the possibility of discovering something new.
