Painter Contemplates the Fifth Wall

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oil linen 48" x 60"

 

The Painter Contemplates the Fifth Wall.” depicts a painter holding his brush and palette, his body and gestures existing (or trapped?) in a tri-partite continuum consisting of floating spheres. In the painting the viewer can observe that this abridged and condensed body image has been placed in a four sided space. Its walls are covered by four paintings which highlight strong moments within avant-garde painting: pivotal landmark paintings by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol. The floor line, not surprisingly, represented by a quadrille which is painted to resist one-point perspective, abnegating the Brunelleschi-space that refers to harmonious control and self-determination through rigorous and consistent spatial mapping of the ground, let us say, of existence. Instead, treatment of the floor, the ground of experience, consist in making it appear to tip over onto itself, indicating a journey into doubt and slippage and brings into focus temporality itself within our lived-world experience. The artist alludes to the questioning of ontological premises and brings into play a set of considerations referring to the task of the artist which is to integrate himself (or herself) within the stream of teleological history and historical conventions. This task also includes the recognition that at some point a resistance of this quadrant of “knowingness” must be put into play. This refusal allows the artist to innovate (thus renovating the past) through present actions. Optimally, Marquez seems to be implying, the artist should end up, culturally speaking, as being seen in a space which is in advance to knowledge (and history) itself.

D.F. Coleman New York critic and arts writer