Painting by numbers and creating circles

Result #1

. Zuma (New World) is a composition of thirty-six symbols arranged on a green grid, all of which are divided into parts: 1 = earth, 2 = sky, 3 = water, 4 = earth, 5 = sky, 6 = water, 7 = earth, 8 = sky, 9 = sky, 10 = earth, 11 = sky. In this composition, the grid is again the basis for a fixed type of form: circles of six black or gray or white squares. The color circle, in its singular form, occupies a central place in the new world.It is at these places that Zuma displays his vision. In doing so, he questions the definitions of space, time, and perception, and he puts a question mark in front of the notion of perception. The question mark forces one to abandon the idea of the real, of the particular, of the particular, and, more importantly, of the pictorial. With this painting, Zuma stresses the qualitative nature of form and the pictorial, in a manner that emphasizes its facticity. By putting a question mark in front of the pictorial, Zuma makes form visible, the interpretation of which is all the more visible. What Zuma has shown us here is that form and interpretation can be separated, that they can be seen from a distance.

Result #2

Painting by numbers and creating circles on a sheet of black paper. One can listen to this song, or read the outline of a circle on a page, for the purpose of learning the form of the circle, but in this case, the circle itself—the shapes—are painted on the paper. In the show, the circle is painted white on a matte black background. The circles are displayed on the floor in a series of four panels—two horizontal, one vertical—and are painted in a repeating pattern of red, yellow, and black. These four panels are arranged in four different color schemes. A separate set of circles is displayed on the white-painted floor. In the display, the four colors and the four forms are all the same size—approx. 23 by 25 by 15 inches—the same width, and the same height. Here, the forms are arranged into squares, the colors in a square format. In addition to this display, the individual forms have small white eyes. The shapes have a white face and are placed in geometric patterns—for example, shapes from a geometrical game or the ring-curve patterns of a chiavari. The colors in these patterns are grouped in a rhythmical sequence that looks like the geometric patterns on a board or a card. Each pattern has a number of concentric, overlapping segments, which are used to subdivide the forms into smaller, equal-size parts.The structure of the paintings is very simple; the shapes are square and rectangular. This structure is repeated throughout the structure of the drawings. However, the shapes, which look very carefully like emblems for a belief system, are not self-created; they are created by careful drafting, by a hand that is not blinded by belief systems. The color of the colors, which look like invisible colored ink, is a secret that the artists revealed by focusing on the forms and using the color in a drawing. They are not intended to be seen, but only seen and remembered.

Result #3

, we can get a certain kind of real engagement. The third work was a little more nebulous, a maze-like thing in which these works found their full expression in black, white, and gray. Each one consisted of five uncolored horizontal bands of various heights and widths. The bands were organized into horizontal loops and linked together with different colors and directions. They developed in a kind of long and drawn line, like the remains of some kind of tribal ritual or a dream. Some were perpendicular, some were curvilinear. These patterns seemed to oscillate between opposites, occasionally picking up on-off cycles of movement. It was like being pulled along by an invisible hand, but if you werent drawn along, you were stuck in an echo chamber. The image was what was on view, and its function was different from that of the paintings. Each work contained one of a number of different shapes that could be worked into the ground plan. Some had smooth black edges, and were just slightly curved. Others were engraved with a pattern of concentric circles, as if the shapes were there to be worked into the ground plan, but they didnt necessarily become part of the ground plan. With the exception of a few paintings, no artworks were painted with a textural finish. The paintings were all nontoxic, only antimatter-colored, and most were the result of quick, fingertip-like smears and smudges on soft wood panels.In a sense, the paintings were somehow analogous to the works of a painter who might not be familiar with the rules of the game. But I liked the paintings more than the paintings, and that was the point.

Result #4

Painting by numbers and creating circles and letters on the wall, and repeating the letter M into the floor. In a fitting feature, there was also a stripped-down, pedestrian display case that included a stacked stack of blocks and a stool. The main hall of the gallery housed a small round room, a plywood floor, and a line of fluorescent lights. This space, which had been customized for the show, was lit from within by a video projection, Side Vision, showing the same scene on monitors hung in the uppermost corner.Each of these disparate elements gave the installation an eerie, uncanny, haunting quality. The three-part installation, which included multiple floor sections and five video projections, was a three-dimensional scene—and a photographic one as well. Shot from the ground up, these figures look like ghosts, not only because of the way they are photographed but because of their deadpan lifelessness, though they have the look of being trapped. The work reminds one of the early photographs of Tolstoys-Sputnik Agreements, a group of peace treaties signed by the Russians and Americans in 1917.The individual works featured, however, were too numerous to have been grouped. While some of the paintings featured the same model, other works are more distinct in theme, such as Oba, a series of sepia-toned black-and-white photographs of a still life in the form of a T-square. The three-part installation was divided into two parts, including a series of black-and-white photographs of flowers in a laboratory, and the layered, layered, object-like works Oba and Kuntar, both 2016. Oba was more ambiguous in that the blue floral form of the blooms resembled plastic and the paper backing of paper. A lump of gray paper held a spoonlike shape with a hole through it, while the paper was divided into squares and arranged on a table.

Result #5

Painting by numbers and creating circles that sometimes look like parting hair are more than welcome. But Jardin, for example, does not use the numbers that compose the letters of his name—and he does not break the rules by laying out all the numbers of his formal vocabulary in rows or by running them through a graphing machine. Its as if these very forms were signs of a language. Theirs was a kind of code. Nowhere were these machines and processes more evident than in the world of numbers and colors.Jardin is a prolific and prolific artist, so to speak. He creates a dizzying number of images, such as in such works as The Light That Remains and The Light That Decays (both 2012), each one corresponding to a number of meters of variously sized chalk, applied in a random pattern to paper, and then painted on. A photo-based drawing of a pile of chalk in a pile is equally impressive, with its combination of pared-down geometric forms, a rough white ground, and a sheer black-and-white tonality. The results are as colorful as could be—like theyre not as hard and clear as real chalk. Each one seems to be like a little glimpse into a corner of some mystery, an illumination that has to do with the dark. Theres a kind of opportunity here, and a darkly funny way to apply that lucky form to the surface of a page. These are the numbers of the gods.Just as Jardins work is brilliant and elegant, so too is his vocabulary, which is equally colorful, bizarre, and dazzling. In previous works, the artist has used the number zero, the letter z, and the letter A, as well as numbers, geometric forms, and letters, in a way that reflects a love for the wild.