Danica Radoshevich, Refraction Studies/ Basement

The artist has done a particularly good job of creating depth using a relatively minimal set of pictorial tools. The work is comprised of monochromatic planes of color, placed at varying angles and layered on top of one another. By placing the planes at such dramatic angles, the geometric shapes appear to recede in to the canvas thus creating a feeling of extreme depth. To this end, the relatively flat, smooth quality of the planes helps to achieve this sense of depth by allowing the viewer’s eye to pass quickly over the surfaces of the planes relatively unhindered. The increased speed with which the viewer’s eye moves through the composition enhances the feeling of falling into the depths of the composition thereby helping to establish a very deep special relationship. Additionally, because the planes of color closest to the foreground are slightly transparent, our eye is allowed to pass through them relatively easily, falling back on the more solid planes beneath, thereby adding yet another dimension to the work’s depth. Perhaps the most striking aspect of this piece is the effectiveness of the artist in constructing a composition that reads almost as a formal landscape, using only a very minimal set of visual tools. While the text, which emerges from the plane of black on the left side of the composition, slightly confuses the spatial relationship of the piece by flattening that area of the composition, at the same time it adds a didactic layer to the meaning of the piece.

Despite the fact that the color planes have very little weight of their own and do not appear particularly sturdy, they nevertheless define the relationship of space within the picture plane and are therefore the most solid objects within the piece. Even though the panel itself, which is left bare in most areas, is in reality far more substantial than the paint applied on its surface, within the picture plane itself the wood reads as a void into which the flat planes recede. The wood panel’s role as empty space within the picture plane contradicts the very rough, sturdy quality of the wood panel itself. By foregoing any significant preparation or refinement of the wood panel, the perception of the panel as an unsubstantial void within the picture plane is in constant competition with the very prominent physical characterisitics of the wood. This contradiction points to the crux of the piece’s content. By simultaneously asserting the physical quality of the materials that compose the piece and the carefully devised artifice of the picture plane itself, the artist challenges the notion that a painting must serve a single function. The piece is at once Modernist in its assertion of the autonomy of material, and academic in its carefully constructed illusionism. In this way, the work asserts the artist’s ability or right to transcend divisions between artistic schools of thought.