Sunday, September 30, 2007

Larose






A long overdue shout-out to Steven Larose of Fish or Cut Bait.
Steven, a forerunner of the artblogging community makes these wonderful ethereal paintings that seem to have an extensive network of sources. They call to mind a vast variety of possibilities, from “a fetus growing black in fecund earth womb” (Geese Bill) to “energy and cigarette burns to let us know to change reels”.... I am drawn to these paintings, not so much for what they might allude to, but I think it is, that at a time when spatial and/or conceptual tension seem to hold a certain prevalence in painting (a la Alexander Ross or even Amy Sillman), Steven's seem to inhabit an anti-tension, a kind of plateauing of both concept and form, or, the markings of a direct consciousness of place. They bring to mind the Japanese spatial concept MA, which Steven and I briefly discussed a while back (for MA, look up MA in the search blog box). See more of Stevens work here.

2 comments:

Steven LaRose said...

ah, thanks, it is quite a rush to see a mini-retrospective curated by someone else.

btw, how old do you think Jordan Stempleman is?

Ryan MacDonald said...

my pleasure to put one together. Jordan is 30 and is always happy to find a sort-of doppelganger to compare notes to.