Last week I reviewed Terry Winters: Facts and Fictions at The Drawing Center. I felt that I would be remiss if I did not also write about Terry Winters: 12twelvepaintings at Matthew Marks. The reason for writing about both exhibitions is the strong connection Winters makes between drawing and painting. As the gallery’s press release points out, the 12 paintings:
[were] completed in 2017. Each is five feet wide and almost seven feet tall and has been built up in layers of oil, wax, and resin. Winters begins each painting as a drawing, or a composite of drawings. The drawings themselves incorporate and modify found imagery, which is largely technical in nature.
Knots, EKG charts and thermal imaging are among the representations and diagrams that have inspired him. For years, he has had an interest in tessellation, which connects to artifice and nature, tiling in Islamic art and the hexagonal cells found in honeycombs. If one strength of painting is to absorb the possibilities attained by science and technology, especially when it comes to seeing, Winters extends and broadens that strain, which dates back to Georges Seurat and his knowledge of optics...