LINN MEYERS: Embracing the Unplanned Imperfect
Margaret Thatcher Projects
511 West 25th Street, 4th floor
New York NY 10001
212 675-0222
January 13 - February 19, 2005
By VICKY PERRY
Linn Meyers Untitled 2004
ink and colored perncil on mylar, 9 x 12 inches
Courtesy Margaret Thatcher Projects
Linn Meyers' dawings, currently on view at Margaret Thatcher Projects are a testimony to the sublimely abstract visual. She achieves her effect through commitment, direct touch and accumulation. The drawings veer toward large-scale - utilizing marker on mylar. All the works are untitled.
Like Agnes Martin, Meyers employs large numbers of small marks to build up a visual density, lines or dots that are parallel or systematically spaced. A sense of ego-less execution is common to both artists. The resulting work carries an aura of naturalness, of self-generation - like a crystal - with no noticeable emotionalism. The sense of humility exists in tension with the fiercely perservering humanity of the work - for it is all nothing but gesture, form and color mediated by a single hand, backed by resolute will.
Meyers' meshes of slight marks build into a gossamer, rippling haze that bears a superficial affinity to Vija Celmins' realist investigations of waves. However, contrasting drawings by Celmins and Meyers leads us to a reasonable, working distinction between abstraction and representation, for Meyers' abstract works are governed by self-elected systems whereas realism is governed by a need to create visual congruence between "seen" forms and the forms found in the artwork. So, Celmins' hand and her mark-making must be controlled by an outer visual form as her eyes flit back and forth from source to artwork. Meyers executes her work in a state of absorption: her focus is completely on the mark as it is made, with minimal awareness of the surrounding marks and certainly no awareness of the overall composition or any visuals outside the drawing's surface.
Meyers commits to an overarching system, a compositional proposal, much in the way Sol LeWitt begins with a predetermined set of rules for construction. This compositional starting point will resolve such issues as drawing size, borders, color choice, mark types (dots or lines) and how the marks are to relate. Unlike LeWitt, the system is not "a machine that makes the art". Since she executes the work herself, without mechanical aids beyond initial ruling, her hand, her eyes and indeed her whole body generate "slippage" of the system through the very imprecise nature of being human.
The variation of distance between marks creates pockets, rivulets and fields of greater and lesser tonal depth. From a distance these tones generate a sense of pictorial space such as folds in fabric. A telling contrast is found between Meyers densities that develop wave-like space when seen from a distance and the eye-trickery practiced by Mark Tansey. Meyers is adamantly abstract. She does not control or second-guess the slippage.
The neutral character of mylar and markers means physical texture is completely flat (disembodied). So visual texture is a function of the density of discrete marks. As is true for any artwork composed of many discrete marks, viewing distance changes the pictorial texture. Close up we see small hard-edge color forms while from a distance we see mists of undulating tone. The actual marker colors are garish but they dissolve in pointillistic obedience into mute, unnameable tones. Similarly, we can observe the geometry of the grid at close range but distance reveals a sense of randomness. The compounded effects of a "mistake", of imprecision ripples through the composition. It is this accumulation of the slightest gesture that coalesces into a critical mass of authority; the acceptance of this imperfection and its existential weight is a moral statement.
Vicky Perry is the author of "Abstract Painting - Concepts and Techniques," upcoming from Watson-Guptil this Spring, with a preface by Barry Schwabsky, and contributions from Pat Lipsky, Peter Halley, Jonathan Lasker, Karin Davie, David Reed and others
