Gerri Rachins
Gray Matter/Primary Matter
New Paintings
March 5th – April 4th, 2009
Please join us for the opening reception with the artist :
Thursday, March 5th, 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.
Artist's Statement
These paintings were influenced by my fascination with the complexity and subjective nature of human perception. Between the eye looking and the mind thinking, assumptions about what is real and what is illusion are made.
The formal structures in my paintings appear to work cohesively in a simple manner. However, many relationships among the elements of shape, form, color, and pictorial space, have been intentionally rendered with ambiguity, in an effort to undermine "first glance" assumptions.
For example, color use has been limited to the primary hues of red, yellow, and blue, with gray, yet within that structure, numerous variations of color occur. Individual qualities of color value, intensity, and temperature have been specifically adjusted, so that shape and form relate to each other, and to the pictorial space that they reside in, with questionable stability.
In fact, contrary to the way in which we usually perceive reality, the longer that we look at one of these paintings, the less certain we become of the absolute stability of anything that our perception and thoughts have led us to believe as absolute truth. Instead, in a playful manner, the paintings ask us questions about what is being perceived. Are there color variations within the shapes and forms that provoke us to question the absolute certainty of a hue? What kind of a shape or form is that? Is there enough visual information to name it with certainty, or is it currently an unknown entity?
As we become more aware of the relationship between our perceptions and our thoughts, we also may become liberated from our assumptions and other preconceived ideas about the nature of the reality that we claim as true. Piet Mondrian said, “Truth has many sides, and we must illuminate as many of them as possible."
Gerri Rachins
2009
Images: