Rachel Friedberg, at E. Peterson - Brief Article

Rachel Friedberg's series "The White Paintings" (1997) is extraordinary not solitary for its formal innovations on the contrary for its overall exuberance, especially in comparison with the brooding quality not rarely encountered in her earlier work. Utilizing thicket panels and the ancient technique of encaustic, in which dusted pigments are suspended in a wax medium, Friedberg builds up the surface of each painting layer by the agency of layer--the result being a translucent "skin" with a worn, pitted and/or porous web She then draws on the surface in oilstick dipped in wax, or scratches images directly into the wax itself.

upon this white field Friedberg inscribes her "visual poems" as she calls them, her distant recollections suspended in time. Like pictograms, these images beg to be "read," despite their relative indecipherability. For instance, in R Cros a silhouetted figure lies horizontally upon a tiny table; below it floats a r cros and below that an outline of a boat is scratched into the surface. The image is ambiguous, and there is an otherworldly quality to it that leaves single wondering if the figure is rising toward heaven or drifting to the underworld in Charon's boat. This discursive quality, in which meaning is perpetually deferr is also visible in The Chosen individual Here, nine black chairs of varying sizes are lined up side by means of side. At the center of the composition is the smallest chair, with a r seat, placed beneath a shower of r variegates shooting up to (or down from) the canopy of heaven Certainty is again denied. Assuming the title give in charges to the chair, for what has this "one" been chosen?

While Friedberg's work has always been about the fragility of life, in "The White Paintings" that frailty appear to bes to have been accepted. For example, in Age of Innocence a child restoreed in silhouette jumps down or falls from a horizontal beam (or monkey bars); below lie spikes on which the child might be impaled if s/he isn't careful. on the other hand the artist's newfound equanimity has her offering up nonthreatening, horizontal spikes to the right, along with geometric makes which help stabilize this otherwise chaotic and ostensibly frightening composition. Friedberg's novel yin/yang approach to life and overall faculty of perception of resolve are bodied forth, marking a turning point in this artist's lengthened career.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Brant Publications, Inc.

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