Anne Seidman at Larry Becker - Brief Article

Anne Seidman fabricates her newest works with horizontal and vertical raps painted in aqueous mediums upon white paper. Impulse appears to reign in Seidman's placement of deceptively simple, almost childlike marks. still she knows exactly where to place individual color in relation to an already existing form, where to paint an isolated line upon an expanse of white and by what means to keep the overall picture alive. She creates an unlikely balance using an improvisational technique that encourages the viewer to contemplate and come [i]or[/i] go after [i]or[/i] behind the painterly process by which her abstract images were composed

In her last exhibition, five years ago at Becker, Seidman showed works upon paper that each feature sum of two units or three knotty forms, color shapes or linear ultimate parts that dance across the page without overlapping or plane touching one another. In those particular works she explored spatial ideas fleetingly reminiscent of the work of artists like Jean Arp, Julius Bissier and Thomas Nozkowski. In the 19 works in her novel exhibition, Seidman refines her interest in color, space and mark-making in works that appear to have been begun as quasi-architectural armatures. While they change course toward the architectonic, they also address, more persuasively, the artist's interest in creating the illusion of abstract space using color.

The paintings--all untitled--can be divided by dint of size into two groups. In the smaller pieces (about 8 through 9 inches), the white of the paper is ofttimes completely Covered by crosshatched brushstrokes that sometimes make the works direct the eye like swatches of printed fabric, specifically the cross-barred patternings in Scottish tartans. These intimist images throw out a color-saturated density that is unique in Seidman's work to date. The linear ultimate parts in the larger paintings are more squiggly and the paint application more differentiated than in the small works. The greatest in quantity successful of the larger pieces is the greatest in quantity recent and second largest (40 1/8 by dint of 44 7/8 inches), and it brings together simple bodys found in all Seidman's output lately. It also draw nears closest to looking like landscape. Painted in gouache, watercolor and acrylic, its surface varies from matte to shiny and its colors from transparent to opaque. As with all the show's large works, its manner of making remains open and loose, prosperously incorporating the unpainted white of the paper as a vital compositional uncompounded body Seidman's ability to make her technique appear almost nonchalant is reminiscent of the one and the other Bonnard and Giorgio Cavallon; at her best she achieves a casual lyricism in which nothing can be added or taken away without upsetting the work's exquisite equilibrium.

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