sometimes with gualdoni’s paintings i feel like there’s a disconnect between what i see in them and what i think i see because that’s what i want to see in them. not quite sure how to position that in relation to overall quality/success of the paintings.
I think this new group of paintings has an assured kind of stroke, which is pretty impressive, but at the same time, it almost feels a little gimmicky – that watercolory, intentionally unfinished effect hogs attention. I feel a vague urge to broach discussions on intent or ‘aboutness’…
with the ones i’ve seen, the dripping is where the pulse comes from…i read it as positive mark-making but also as a kind of subtraction, like watching an old decaying film, flashes of white light creeping around the edges. and these paintings do have a real presence. from 10-12′ away.
closer, the washes resolve a little less into atmospheric haze than they appear to. the marks on top are clumsier and more careful than i’d thought from across the room.
i don’t know that it’s normally a bad thing for a painting to have a different look up close than it does from further away. usually that’s a positive quality. it’s just that these don’t quite shift in the way i’d expect them to.
What I like most about her work is that she expresses the contrast between the reality of an abandoned building and the painting as representing a spoiled child’s abandoned play thing. Food for thought in our throw away culture. Expecially now in a recession it’s time to rethink our endless fascination with consumption.
sometimes with gualdoni’s paintings i feel like there’s a disconnect between what i see in them and what i think i see because that’s what i want to see in them. not quite sure how to position that in relation to overall quality/success of the paintings.
That’s well put.
I think this new group of paintings has an assured kind of stroke, which is pretty impressive, but at the same time, it almost feels a little gimmicky – that watercolory, intentionally unfinished effect hogs attention. I feel a vague urge to broach discussions on intent or ‘aboutness’…
I went to the opening…not that thrilled – -
with the ones i’ve seen, the dripping is where the pulse comes from…i read it as positive mark-making but also as a kind of subtraction, like watching an old decaying film, flashes of white light creeping around the edges. and these paintings do have a real presence. from 10-12′ away.
closer, the washes resolve a little less into atmospheric haze than they appear to. the marks on top are clumsier and more careful than i’d thought from across the room.
i don’t know that it’s normally a bad thing for a painting to have a different look up close than it does from further away. usually that’s a positive quality. it’s just that these don’t quite shift in the way i’d expect them to.
What I like most about her work is that she expresses the contrast between the reality of an abandoned building and the painting as representing a spoiled child’s abandoned play thing. Food for thought in our throw away culture. Expecially now in a recession it’s time to rethink our endless fascination with consumption.