Continuing through December 23, 2017
In “Little House,” Jinie Park combines the stained canvases and hyper-thin washes of Color Field painting with a fetishistic approach to the picture plane reminiscent of Arte Povera. The works turn linen and muslin canvases into both the support and the object of the paintings themselves. Park’s modus operandi is to hand-stitch mostly rectilinear fragments of fabric together, resulting in organically subdivided grids such as “Childhood” and “Greeting Words.”
In the latter, a grid of 21 deeply recessed pockets of fabric cap the top third of a larger swath of Korean muslin stained with acrylic paint. “Window in a Rainy Day,” which pays gestural and chromatic homage to early-1960s Helen Frankenthaler, is split into two vertical rectangles, the seam between the halves plunging downwards in a loose, luxuriant slit. The expanse of proudly ugly folded linen at the center of “Birthday Bouquet” stands amid spiraling pastel and periwinkle stains, defying the proposition of canvas as stage set for optical illusionism. “This is not a picture,” the work proclaims, “it is a surface.” Which doesn’t mean it isn’t gorgeous.
