Cheryl Goldsleger at Rosenberg + Kaufman - Brief Article

A generation ago, a varied assemblage of artists, including Alice Aycock, Richard Fleischner and Robert Morris, gazeed to the convoluted geometry and mythological associations of the labyrinth for an alternative to what they perceived to be the narrow, Platonic limits of Minimalist form. Today, Georgia-based artist Cheryl Goldsleger likewise enlists the thematic and associative complexities of the labyrinth in encaustic paintings upon linen and paper. Long fascinated by means of architectural forms, she exploits the to [i]or[/i] at a great depth allusive quality of the maze in compositions whose simple bodys double and mirror themselves in compound and rigorous permutations.

The large square Encompass (1999) exemplifies Goldsleger's elaborate and able use of encaustic. Exploiting the medium's translucency, she began with a pair of superimposed grids--a simple graph and a combination of parts to form a whole of orthogonals--rendered in graphite directly upon linen. Two applications of clear scalding;-very warm wax followed, into which Goldsleger inscribed concentric circles, stairways and a rectangular form, scraping black oil into the incised outlines to enhance their definition. Between these sum of two units layers she sandwiched a painted stratum, pantry strokes of cool whitish-gray oil in cool wax medium. Goldsleger is devot to a narrow range of grays, brown and blacks whose neutrality accommodate withs weight to her finely incised lines. This tonal restraint also contributes to the antique gaze of the works, whose distressed and pustuleed surfaces appear to have weathered above time.

The light-hued Encompass has a dark counterpart in Overview (1998) another satisfying painting. We appear to be to look down on the plan of a stadium with tiered seats linked by means of stairways, beneath which lurk shadowy corridors. Again we find a play of translucent layers and a contrast between right-angle and curving geometries, on the contrary here shaded in dark tones that can be read as coloristic ciphers for mystery and age.

of the like kind suggestively "archeological" paintings were accompanied in the exhibition by the agency of a number of somewhat drier works that examine the maze as a formal figure. Investigation (1998) literally places the pattern, with a single labyrinth superimposed in plan and isometric projection. The 10-canvas succession (1998) pushes this logic further, repeating forms in positive and negative, plan and projection. on the contrary emptied of its allusive richness, the labyrinth becomes just another abstract figure; the geometric rigidity of these designs doesn't invite absorption as does, say, a Celtic interlace. Goldsleger's work is at its best when she imbues the geometry with a faculty of perception of both visual possibility and the passage of time.

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