>>PREVIEW
CHROMA
Runs until June 30
Elizabeth Barnes
Herringer Kiss Gallery
Herringer Kiss Gallery’s current exhibition, Chroma, showcases Vancouver-based artist Elizabeth Barnes’s latest abstract paintings. The 14 medium-sized works included in the show cover the white walls of the gallery with eye-popping shades of yellow, red, blue and green. Minus a few nuances, these paintings seem to follow a formula that includes an accumulation of thin layers of translucent colour, slender multicoloured stripes and strange circular cell-like forms and patterning. However abstract and transcendent her paintings may seem, these works were born out of an understanding and fascination for mathematics, colour theory, medical science, technology and quantum physics.
The selection of paintings currently on display at the gallery marks a shift in the artist’s body of work. Essence and Function, the oldest painting in the group, is seen by the artist as being significantly transitional, for it possesses characteristics from her previous creative interests while also laying the groundwork for her present artistic pursuits. The painting’s leafy green vertical bands that cover the surface of the canvas oscillate in tonal value like century-old paper discoloured by time and mould. Optically floating above this space – thanks to the use of contrasting colours – are two tumbleweed-like forms that are fashioned by stringing hundreds of painted dots in subtle shades of red, burgundy and purple. Like other similar shapes in Barnes’s previous works, the patterns for these forms were randomly generated with a computer program, following the rules of fractal geometry.
Shifting away from such technological assistance, Barnes recently became increasingly interested in the science of colour and medicine, reflected in the work presently on display. Unfortunately, she became even more involved and interested in medical science and technology when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007 while working on this very show. This life experience "had a huge bearing on the way my work played out. I’ve been looking at medical technology and imagery for some time, but here I was actually immersed in it, a part of it. There has been a lot of testing. I had this bone scan, and the scanner was ticking off the lines that are my skeletal system… like an MRI reading." One of her last works for the show, a diptych entitled Spectrum: Chroma 12, has horizontal lines that were inspired by this bone scan.
Barnes’s work is created through a careful balance between control and chaos. As a colour theory teacher at the Emily Carr Institute, she became fascinated with the history of paint pigments and how most painters today unknowingly still use the same mineral paint palette from the 17th century. Since discovering this, she has switched to using modern organic pigments (that are synthetic carbon-based), giving the work a luminous, stained quality that is also more akin to contemporary consumer colours. Researching colour theory has also familiarized the artist with how the human eye perceives colour and how it can be tricked into believing that depth is possible on a flat surface.
Barnes’s knowledge of colour gives her the option to firmly control the outcome of her paintings. Yet, perhaps in reaction to all that desire to be in command of its outcome, the artist hands over the fate of her carefully groomed work to the unpredictability of chemical reactions. Before going to sleep, Barnes drips and splatters solvents on her paintings that eat away at the thin layers of paint, discolouring their surface in an assortment of interesting patterns. The most captivating painting to come out of this process is Allotropy, best described as radioactive green cell-like forms floating in a semi-opaque, viscous blue liquid. The fact that her painting evolves without her assistance excites her: "I don’t know what the surfaces will look like until I come back the next day, which is something that I really like."
With many of these visceral paintings, such as Yellow: Chroma 3 and Green: Chroma 4, Barnes felt the need to ground the whole and "to balance the chaos with this sense of order" by adding horizontal stripes on the lower part of the work. In some of her paintings, the tension between the stripes and the colour fields play well off one another, such as in Blue: Chroma 11. On others, the lines become a bit contrived. There seems to be reluctance on the artist’s part to completely let go of adding structure and form to her already interesting paintings. With her knowledge of colour and chemical reactions, it would be intriguing to see Barnes create a monochromatic painting free of controlled forms, which would have the effect of emphasizing the work’s delicate and delicious shifts in colour.
It is surprising to think that these paintings, filled with luminosity and vibrant colours, were created during such a traumatic time in the artist’s life. "I actually finished the last piece for this show (Harmony: Chroma 10) literally two days before I went into surgery." |
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