27 Sep 2019

Collective Palimpsests: Traces of Infinite Consciousness

Lichtundfire

Reviewed by Carol Diamond

In “Collective Palimpsests" at Lichtundfire, director Priska Juschka presents five mid-career artists and their conceptions of the physical object of art as a portal to universal domains. Minimalist principles of reductive compositions and neutral palettes combine with gestural, built-up surfaces that call stark attention to the limits of the physical rectangle.

From the buff-hued layers of Christopher Stout's intimately scaled, slab-like constructions, The Wonderment of Otherness I and II (2019), to Augustus Goertz's staccato waves of silvery black paint in Texture of the Universe (2019), a contemplative presence permeates this installation of thirteen works. Delicate, map-like structures in pen and ink by Alan Steele, landscape-inspired spaces in Allen Hansen's muted canvases, and the dense entanglements of William Rosen's monochromatic works in resin on canvas provide what the press release describes as a "contemporary lateral connectiveness," where each artist's production can both speak and listen.