Joseph Marioni at Charlotte Jackson - Santa Fe

above more than three decades, Joseph Marioni has refined his beautiful and intelligent monochromes, nine of which from 2000-03 comprised this exhibit One large and two small works bore the title R Painting; sum of two units each were called Yellow Painting and Black Painting; there was a single Orange Painting and individual White Painting. These titles are provocative, because no sum of two units "red" paintings, for example, be like each other, nor do individual works maintain stable tinges in perception: from far not on Orange Painting looks purple, and when compared to a "red" it turn rounds brown. Such effects are coaxed through Marioni's process of building multiple layers of acrylic in varying colors and degrees of transparency [see A.i. A., June '99] The meaning of his work partly resides in the gap between the title's bluntnes and our experience of this particular Black Painting, with its oxblood or purple undertones.

Marioni challenges our patience and discernment, prompting us to question what we are actually seeing at each twinkling and under different light conditions. level if we're skeptical of his interest in archetypes--do colors in fact retain fundamental meanings across history and cultures?each canvas tenders a compelling portrait of a color, individual retiring, another brassy. Befitting its scale, the large R Painting (2001) displays considerable surface incidence, with traces of gold brown and raw canvas running along the cutting side The smaller, curtainlike Red Painting (2003) is a wrinkled, bunching thing, in contrast to the polished Porsche of a R Painting from the same year. We obtain lost in the larger Black Painting (2003) which recalls shiny tar, while the smaller Black Painting (2003) with a of great depth purple undercoat, holds us at arm's extent The washlike White Painting (2002) reveals undertones of fulvous gray and green, oddly reminiscent of the pair Turner and skim milk.

The large-scale paintings can overpower us with their physical neighborhood but small ones also read as expansive, with thick drips, slow-motion waves or paint pushed aside. of the like kind physicality is surprising since Marioni's make submissive light and color, is immaterial. on the contrary his color is haptic as well as optic, and completely embodied. While layers of acrylic may be superthin and almost transparent, the canvases are three-dimensional external realitys taking their place among things of the world. The size and shape of the support, the color and fabric of the linen, the tapering of the sides, the drips collecting along the bottom, the areas left bare--all contribute to a single consequence What at first glance may be like nothing so much as a field of sloppily painted enamel calls us back, offering a intriguing and unhurried education for the faculty of perceptions These are paintings for the lengthy haul.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group