Critical Junctures

To jump into the void, one has to be very calm. One has to have arrived at that moment when all is decided; then one can move, completely free from moral or psychological impediment. That we seldom achieve this state is of practical benefit to our survival.

The boundaries in Martin Myers’ new work are clear but never rigid. They set off objects vivid in their scintillating presence. Like a quattro-cento religious painter, Myer takes great care in the material preparations of these works, and the material translates into a palpable image which gratifies the viewer. The 1996 works are all done on birch plywood panels about 15 inches square that Myers makes himself. One half of his studio is a woodshop, where these bases pile up, waiting their turn to serve in the evolution of the painted piece. When that time arrives, Myers looks through his sketchbooks; fixing on an image, he begins to elaborate and refine its form while applying it to the wooden support. He works with the base in a horizontal position and uses a variety of media – egg tempera, acrylic, urethane, casein, and shellac –  to lay in different areas of texture.

We are constantly weighing options, a series of decisions. “Criticism” means deciding. The artist practices criticism in his making and revealing, as much as the critic in his responding, The artist’s is the primary criticism, the critic’s secondary, but neither is secure, and both share a collective onus.

From a distance, you do not at first notice these subtleties, yet they have an effect on you. They draw you in to contemplate the images Myers effects, revealing a dense humanity behind an initially daunting surface. They are rectilinear structures with a decidedly three dimensional aspect. One becomes interested in how Myers plays with the relationship between the edges of the dark, luminous forms and the edges of the grey ground, which is itself surrounded by a uniform white border.

Perhaps the void and the solid are one and the same. The cathedral both exists and doesn’t exist. It is the structure and the negative space within the structure that together provoke undeniable feelings of surging, limitless, emotion. To see the world in terms of opposites is restrictive and may be futile. Perhaps it is more productive to view the world in terms of boundaries, edges.

Sometimes we feel we are looking at a building. Other times, it could be a blast of black light, or a magnetic impulse. In one picture, a shape takes two different-sized squares for two of its sides, connecting the corners of other squares to create overlapping and diminishing forms with a precise rhythmic balance. These images have the solidity of Richard Serra’s oilstick drawings and prints and the perspicuity of Joel Shapiro’s early sculpture. They can also bring to mind the paintings of Malevich in their understated presence. Their impact, though, derives from the ubiquitous urban architectural forms that have always distinguished Myers’ work.