Phase: Marieta Chirulescu, Fred Sandback

Muted and mutable surfaces take shape as thresholds in Phase at Galerie Thomas Schulte, a two-person exhibition of works on canvas by Marieta Chirulescu and spatial installations by Fred Sandback. The works share a processual and intuitive approach that engages shifting perceptual properties of light and space. What may at first appear pared down, or emptied out, slowly takes on further dimensions, including that of time—a sense of transience that unsettles what could appear as clear-cut geometries. Between opening as surface and the solidity of transparency, our attention is pulled towards what is actually there but may otherwise elude us: space as subtle material presence.

In canvases that are largely monochrome, and frequently, but not exclusively, in shades of white, Chirulescu’s works induce shifting translucencies, depths, and textures. She often combines physical, painterly gestures and marks with photographic and digital ones, drawing on different media and techniques of image-making and reproduction. Compiling layers while reducing visual traces, the resulting works oscillate between the concrete and the spectral. This may be expressed, for instance, in iridescence: an effect of light and motion. As though illuminated from within,real reflections in some works generate an illusion of three dimensionality, while amplifying the actual presence of the image. It is the sliver of space between layers, like a sheet of paper on the glass plate of a scanner, that Chirulescu is interested in activating.

From the use of a scanner to closely develop an image from an object that retains its depth, to colors that evolve over time through composites of material and shades, light gives shape and is drawn out through surprising density. Spanning nearly ten years of Chirulescu’s practice, the inkjet prints on canvas here, at times with paint and textile applied, bring certain continuities into form, alongside the expansive possibilities of image making within this frame. Apart from visible superimpositions of scraps and fragments, material specificities occasionally enter around the edges of canvases, offering an abstract point of reference within an otherwise open field. Folds and shadows, as temporary or changing states of a fabric, become fixed through the application of paint and primer, or the use of shadow effects in digital processing programs. In both cases, the impression of gradual unfolding grants a lived-in feel.

As processes that can leave their own marks and traces, scanners or photocopiers interject in streaks, blur, or static. A single, straight, luminous line may stretch – mostly vertically – from edge to edge, appearing like string and lending a sort of material tension that interacts with horizontal waves, bands, and markings. Their appearance is sometimes particularly interrupted by noise – with a fraying consistency and connection made tenuous. Other expanses in varied states of continuity and disturbance at times partially frame or split the canvas, adding a set of relations that underscore their object presence. The thin line of shadow from the unswerving edge of a transparent panel, for instance, begins to dip into a fold below it, disrupting the line while tugging open a small point of entry. Illumination and transparency surface through the addition of layers.

The spaces here are largely defined by vertical motion, extending from Chirulescu’s canvases and reverberating in Sandback’s installations. The material slightness and weightlessness of Sandback’s linear sculptures, which he began producing in the late 1960s, give tautly defined form to expansive volumes and planes that remain unfixed. Multi-part vertical constructions and open-ended forms initiate points of contact between different architectural surfaces in changing constellations. Space transforms into planes, is folded, sliced, and intersects with existing horizontal lines and corners. Even as the works are loosed from their objecthood, they retain a physical nature. The precision and tension of the straight lines is subtly offset by the soft texture of the different colored strands of acrylic yarn, which take on an appearance like translucence: luminous, yet out of focus. The yarn may cast shadows on the walls and floor—like further threads, or line drawings—sometimes a shifting and gentle presence, at other times a stark expression.

Through Sandback’s sculptures, distinct and continuous views are offered even as they are effectively split. Here, there are parallel lines and right angles, forming planes, screens or portals. The yarn generates more angles and corners, windows and doorways than a room has, while underscoring its characteristics. It may be the slight gap between a strand of yarn and the wall or floor—especially when seen at a distance that collapses it—that particularly comes to hold great tension and potential for activation. In some instances where the yarn hovers slightly away from the wall, it’s not quite a flat form that is outlined, nor is it three-dimensional. Like a plane in front of a plane, it frames while adding another layer: an in-between where only space can take shape.

Sandback’s works alter in effect and scale in the different environments they inhabit. Rhythms continuously shift with our own movements, shapes come to the fore but are left partially undefined. Distinctions between inside and outside are never realized—an effect that is enhanced by an installation spanning the gallery’s corner space, which is similarly formed of interactions between interior and exterior.

Phase, as an indication of time, may suggest a gradual shift, in light or color, an in-between state, an ongoing process or a cyclical return. The untitled, decidedly non-referential works throughout the exhibition carry both an openness and a tangible extension of the boundaries of their respective media—material conditions set in motion through resonances in space.

 
Text by Julianne Cordray