맥아서 비니언(1946년 미국 미시시피주 메이컨 출생, 현재 일리노이주 시카고에서 거주하며 작업)은 콜라주와 드로잉, 페인팅을 결합하여 사적인 문서와 사진의 표면에 격자무늬의 그리드(grid)를 중첩시키는 자전적 추상 작업을 한다. 그의 작품에는 작가 자신의 여권, 출생증명서, 주소록, 전화번호부, 유년 시절 그림과 흑인 린칭 사진 등이 등장하는데, 이는 오일 스틱으로 그린 그리드로 인해 은폐되고 추상화된다. 거시적 관점에서 비니언의 작업은 그리드나 연속적인 형태, 반복과 같은 요소를 작품의 전략적 장치로 활용한다는 점에서 미니멀리즘 및 개념주의의 특징과 맞닿아 있다. 그러나 다른 동시대 미술가들이 물성, 추상성 및 사회정치적 분위기에 대한 발언에 몰두한 반면 비니언은 개인의 역사와 회화 작업 과정 자체에 더 깊이 전념하며 결정적인 차별점을 갖는다. ‘의식 이면(underconscious)’으로 대변되는 사진 및 문서 위에 그리드 구조를 중첩시키는 고유한 실천 행위는 보는 이에게 이미지와 텍스트의 가시성을 허용하는 동시에 그 일부를 은폐한다.

비니언의 작품은 고유한 리듬을 제시한다. 그의 작업 전반에 걸쳐 반복과 연속성은 주요한 전략으로 활용된다. 한 폭의 회화 안에서 작가는 자신이 선별한 특정 사진이나 문서를 화폭 전체에 증식시켜 반복적인 그리드 혹은 기하학적 패턴을 이루도록 만든다. 또한 작가 특유의 연작 단위 작업을 통해 유사한 구도와 색채, 이미지와 문서를 거듭 소환한다. 비니언에게 있어 반복은 지극히 개인적인 것이다. 의사소통의 어긋남을 직접 겪으며 고민해 온 경험을 가진 작가에게 연속성이란 미니멀리즘과 개념주의 미학만을 의미하지 않는다. 그는 여기에 개인적 경험을 결부시키며 반복이라는 장치가 가진 정동적 가능성을 제안한다.

Shirazeh Houshiary (b. 1955, Shiraz, Iran; lives and works in London, United Kingdom) makes painting, sculpture, and animation that seek to challenge viewers’ perceptions of time, space, and materiality. Her works often engage opposing ideas and states of being, including transparency and opacity, sound and silence, surface and depth, and presence and absence. From a distance, her paintings are reminiscent of a swirling galaxy, but as the viewer draws closer, the meticulousness, detail, and hidden Arabic letters that make up her amorphous forms begin to unfold. The universe, with its contradiction, paradox, and complexity is a core subject matter in her work. The Arabic words embedded in her compositions are a juxtaposition of the opposing phrases “I am” and “I am not,” oscillating freely between focused and unfocused states, where the meaning of our existence becomes superfluous and lost in Houshiary’s imagined cosmos.

Houshiary’s painting technique involves the successive layering of pigment and line, a laborious process that often takes several months to complete. Her surfaces are composed of intricate patterns that appear to pulse, undulate, and recede into the canvas, like a veil or membrane. She takes a similar methodical approach to her dynamic sculptures, constructing towers out of glass or aluminum bricks that, layer by layer, seem to emerge from the floor. Each vertical plane of bricks echoes the original shape of the structure’s footprint incrementally rotated to the maximum degree the form will allow before the resulting helix shape becomes unstable. For each work, Houshiary attempts to visualize subjects that are inherently intangible—an echo, human breath, or memory.

Liza Lou (b. 1969 NYC lives and works in Joshua Tree, California) is widely known for her pioneering work as both an artist and for her groundbreaking social practice of the mid-2000s. Beginning with her conceptual use of glass beads, Lou’s room-size installations of the 1990s challenged stereotypes and gender roles within the art canon and broke down boundaries between art and craft.¹ In 2002, she received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, which she utilized to found a women’s advocacy program within her studio in Durban, South Africa which she operated from 2005-20, expanding the possibilities of social engagement within an art studio environment. During the 15 years she lived and worked in South Africa, Lou developed a poetic, handmade approach to Minimalism that utilizes the oils of the human hand as a form of paint in woven paintings, such as Soil | Solid (2012), which is in the permanent collection of the Des Moines Art Center, and room-scaled wall works, sculptures and installations, such as Security Fence (2005), now in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Continuous Mile (2008), in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Current work has the artist in further dialogue with art history as she explores the possibility of her chosen material to act as a fluid paint body, bringing an original and Feminist vision to painting.² Through the slow accrual of a humble material, Lou recalibrates the action of a brushstroke into elaborate, cell-by-cell explorations that combines the exuberance of Pop and Abstract Expressionism with the materiality and sheen of her early work, while pushing the language of painting further forward.