The recent Surface exhibition at Space Gallery in Denver was beautifully installed. The curator of the gallery happened to hang my paintings, Drift 1 - 4, in a vertical stack, instead of the long horizontal line I had originally envisioned. The dimensions of this stack are 36 inches wide by approximately 58 inches high. I think this presentation gives the series a new interpretation from what I had intended and, in fact, I love this stacked grouping. I feel as though the curator, Michael Burnett, has collaborated with me on an entirely singular piece!
The exhibition closes on November 1st, so if you happen to be in Denver please visit the gallery and enjoy the show.
6 comments:
These look wonderful, Diane. I was just saying the other night that one of my very favorite things about exhibiting is seeing what others bring out of the work via the installation. Beautifully done!
Thanks so much, Kim!
We had some discussions about this on site. I understand why they were hung this way. I still think they would have had more impact and had more to say strung out in the horizontal. Walking a path to view them allows for a different kind of processing, more dynamic, as opposed to standing in place. It's all about the conversation the pieces have with each other through the viewer.
I definitely agree with you, Nancy. Although this was not an ideal way of presenting this work, I was interested in the unexpected way they work together as a stack. There was a spiritual element in the long horizontal that I had envisioned, a quality of meditative looking, that is not possible when they are stacked like this. So yes, I agree they would have had more impact hung side by side.
I am definitely a stand in one place viewer. Much of my own work is smaller in scale and works well combined when hung because new visual relationships are established. There is complexity created when you have to process pieces that have been arranged together that you miss when you have to move along to view.
Margaret, thanks for sharing your point of view. You're right - the relationships that are created when the paintings are grouped together instead of individually offer one interpretation that would have been missed if you had to take them in one at a time. That's why this "collaboration" was so fascinating for me. In the end, I realize that there are at least 2 ways to hang these paintings, and maybe a third (a grid of four, i.e., 2 stacks of 2). Which gets back to Kim's point of the interesting role the curator has via the installation.
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