I’ve been following the creative trajectory of Luanne E. Witkowski for some years. I’m repeatedly amazed by this artist’s reinvention of her observe by way of ever new discreet our bodies of labor, whereas retaining her distinctive voice. “Quiet disruption,” now on view at Kingston Gallery in Boston delivers her newest iteration of abstraction and metaphor, and fairly truthfully her most refined and stylish present up to now.
A multidisciplinary artist, with work that has rigorously explored drawing, portray, printmaking, discovered objects, set up, environmental and land artwork, Witkowski returns to the immediacy of drawing and printmaking and the juxtaposition of blended media on this newest present with works she titles as “Peace Choices.” A grasp of shade and composition, her new work re-addresses the grid, and the way nature’s contours distinction with that utilitarian summary geometry which in itself is an origin of conceptual artwork.
Take, as an illustration, the potential reference to the origins of numerical programs and the abacus that I’m able to think about in Peace Providing IX. I can see items of Birch wooden holding locations for the variety of water fowl noticed on a specific night as referenced by the darkish floor. Then maybe the quantity is additional abstracted by scratches made towards a cave wall throughout a mapping of a calendar of those visits to trace the birds. Then in additional sophistication of the language of abstraction in Peace Providing I, I’m able to visualize an aestheticized cosmology: A sq. solar (!!) rising by way of a sunshower that feeds a river poetically populated with rocks types a metaphor for a perfect backyard that continues to emerge from our dwelling planet right now.
With a double main BFA from MassArt in printmaking and artwork historical past, and an MA from Umass Boston in vital and inventive pondering, Witkowski’s work has been layered and sophisticated from the very starting. In her love for artists related to Minimalism, I acknowledge nods to those previous masters, be they aware or not. I see the late works of Agnes Martin that introduced natural types and the artist’s hand to her austere patterns and shade fi elds in Peace Providing IV (Land of the Silver Birch,) and in Peace Providing XI. I acknowledge the “zipper strains” of Barnett Newman in lots of the works together with Peace Providing XIV, and I may even detect a hint of Donald Judd’s “stacks” on the left facet of Peace providing XVIII and Peace Providing XX.
Past these private and historic contextualizations, there’s a reconsidered and reactivated deployment of materiality as a salve or a touchstone. A lot in the way in which that an ocean swim or a forest tub can restore one’s soul, there are tactile signifi ers from nature. Some are of their unique untouched state, whereas others are floor with a pestle, and even run by way of the press themselves, additional complicating their inclusion. Witkowski’s work is a studied commentary of the relationships of pure phenomena with trendy human expertise. And like Newman’s essentialism, unifying the macro and the micro in his Onement works, Witkowski has distilled the artificial and the natural in addition to the “everlasting and ephemeral” (from the press launch) into metaphors for the late anthropocene period, and the final word endurance and survival of nature, with or with out us.
For instance, remoted and instantly recognizable discovered natural supplies converse with fabricated geometric types and helps. Coloration and scale alternately spotlight, intensify, and harmonize these relationships. Area is toyed with and balanced by way of layering and navigating edges. These works puzzle collectively representations of our pure and invented worlds and maintain the contradictions of “progress” that they create in a unifi ed composition with out imposing any explicit politics. We’re given the house to determine the place our consideration is being referred to as and what we’ll select to deal with.
These compositions refl ect on our shared modern existential dilemma of separation from, and starvation for nature and our seek for which means. The work asks if a return to the backyard is even potential, and what that might and can even seem like. However a hope for transformation by way of consciousness lies within the very decisions Witkowski makes to create these works. Lots of her supplies are self made utilizing pure natural sources corresponding to spices, shells, fl ora, and foraged assets, together with repurposed and recycled parts. This reclaiming of the “technique of manufacturing” in artwork making reorients studio observe in direction of the artist’s dedication to sustainability. This course of immerses the artist within the knowledge of the pure world and contributes to her personal bodily well being by way of hikes and scavenging, mixing and constructing. It additionally resists and disrupts the expertise pushed post-industrial artwork complicated’s obsession with novelty and consumerism that drives extraction capitalism and environmental collapse.
However the works in Quiet disruption don’t generate angst over these topical issues. Reasonably they provide respite from hurried schedules and doom scrolling. They grant us valuable pause from these relentless calls for, and open up a spaciousness for broader horizons and deeper understandings. Mild, uncomplicated, and regarded balances of form, kind, shade and symbolism mix in an aesthetic perspective of magnificence that’s greater than only a advantage in itself. These edifying works assist our function in critically addressing what is required if we wish to cocreate a sustainable tradition. —Gray Dey
Studio discuss with the artist: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DKkPz3LAUVK/
“Quiet disruption” runs by way of July twenty ninth at Kinston Gallery, Boston, MA.
