Amy Ellingson: Recent Work/Semper Augustus

Amy Ellingson

Amy Ellingson

Haines Gallery, San Francisco Charles Cowles Gallery, New York 1

2

Abstraction, Ecstasy, Technology: Amy Ellingson’s Paintings

by Donald Kuspit

...ecstatic phenomena proliferate in proportion to the technicization of society.

-Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society1

Amy Ellingson’s abstract paintings can be understood as a kind of Op Art—they would fit comfortably in The Responsive Eye exhibition that introduced the movement to the art world in 1965 (via MoMA)—but there’s much more to them than optical purity and illusionistic irony. They too explore the psychosomatic effects of color, light, motion, and shape. But Ellingson’s paintings are much more than Op Art eye-teasers: they carry Cézanne’s “vibrating sensations” to an electronic extreme, giving them an ecstatic edge beyond anything Cézanne expected.

Ellingson’s abstractions are optical orgasms—alive with an orgasmic vividness impossible until the computer came along. They hover between the sensuous and the sensual. They engage the eye, but they have a voluptuous presence, as though their intricate curves, inlaid in a grid—reminiscent of pattern painting—were the feverish trace of a body, ostensibly anonymous but implicitly female.

Am I free associating too far? Am I suggesting that Ellingson’s paintings are paeans to female passion?

Am I absurd in associating the Identical/Variation (red) series, 2006 with the multiple orgasms the female body is capable of in contrast to the one-at-a-time orgasm the male body is limited to, suggesting that men are much less erotically complex than women,

Facing page: (Detail) Variation/Mutation (brown, blue, red, white)

3

much less able to enjoy their bodies, much less able to rise to the ecstatic heights than women? Perhaps, but there is no escaping the passionate complexity— the erotically convulsive character—of the Identical/Variation (red) series. The encaustic and oil with which they are painted gives them sensual richness.

In the Identical/Variation (lavender, green, brown, red) paintings, red continues to dominate, with the other colors forming a secondary pattern that supports and elevates it, so that it seems to project beyond the painting, the relief-like illusion making it all the more startling—erotically forceful and overwhelming, indeed, ecstatically intense and confrontational.

Hooked on Ellingson’s colors, we are caught in her erotic net, woven of looping gestures that seem to wrap themselves around us, like passionate snakes.

But I am losing myself in speculative fantasy and getting ahead of my analysis. Ellingson may be an Op artist, making paintings that demonstrate what Vasarely called pulsing “kinetic plastics,” but her abstractions encapsulate much of the history of abstraction, from Mondrian’s late grid paintings through all-over “polyphonic” painting, as Clement Greenberg called it, to the generic field and feminist pattern painting that followed it (as well as “extensions” and transformations of Vasarely’s and Bridget Riley’s visual ideas). But Ellingson’s grid paintings are more exciting and rhythmically sophisticated than Mondrian’s, her all-overness is more musically complex and technically sophisticated than modernist all-over painting (which began with Kandinsky), and

her patterned fields more cognitively sophisticated, not to say intellectually demanding, and, at the same time, more emotionally insinuating and hedonistically intimidating, than anything produced by the feminist pattern painters. (And much more dramatically alive—vibrant with power—than Vasarely’s and Riley’s paintings.)

It is computer technology that has made this possible. It allows Ellingson to revitalize what has become stale, decadent, historical. Kandinsky spoke of the electric aliveness of his abstractions, but Ellingson’s electronic abstractions are more alive than his paintings seem today. Ellingson writes: “The compositions are designed on the computer using simple geometrical shapes—lines, curves, arcs, and grids. I replicate and layer these primary elements into an increasingly complex field that I then render in discreet layers of oil and encaustic.” Thus Ellingson thinks of herself as a computer formalist; as she states, her works are about “formal repetition, variation and mutation within limited serial systems and networks.” But her painterly handling (more or less) of “computer-generated images, ghostlike diagrams of mathematical relationships, maps of evanescent data streams”—her Statement is as meticulously crafted, indeed, elegant and self-assured as her paintings—not only gives them “undeniable materiality and permanence,” but an ingrained tactility, and with that a concentrated expressivity. Encaustic and oil also keep her work from seeming all too formulaic, however manipulated the geometrical formula. It is

by combining the old technology of the brush with the new technology of the computer that Ellingson reaches new heights of abstract ecstasy—a new optical transcendence.

Her Variation/Mutation (brown, blue, red, white) mural, 2006—a triumphant tour de force of geometrical manipulation—is more abstractly intense and complicated than the Identical/Variation paintings. Both are expressively quirky and conceptually sophisticated, but the pattern is skewed—disintegrated into fragments—in Variation/Mutation (brown, blue, red, white). It may seem strange to say so, but the Identical/Variation (red, green, black) paintings, 2005, herald this disintegration—the emergence of entropy (implicit in the homogeneity of the grid, as Rudolf Arnheim argues), the absolute death conveyed by the ghostly whiteness of the Variation/Mutation (brown, blue, red, white) mural—and by the black grid of the Identical/Variation (red, green, black) paintings.

The red has receded into the background, the black is disturbingly prominent. It is a branding iron that imprints itself on the eye, almost making it colorblind.

White also makes a strong appearance in the eccentric grids of the Identical/Variation (lavender, green, red) works, and a spectacular appearance in Variation/Mutation (red, green, lavender, white) but the grid holds together, however extravagantly complicated in the latter—it continues to have the emblematic look of an icon—making for an altogether different effect: light holding its own against the underlying grid, with its dimness and vestiges of black. In contrast, the shattered/scattered effect in Variation/Mutation (brown, blue, red, white) indicates that death has invaded the grid, ironically undermining it to fresh expressive effect. The heterogeneity of Left: Identical/Variation (red, green, black) #1

4

Right: Identical/Variation (red, green, black) #2

the fragments mocks the grid’s relentless if “twisted” uniformity in the Identical/Variation works. It is as though the grid has finally been distorted to the breaking point—twisted until it loses its geometrical identity and breaks apart.

But all is not lost: the fragments still vibrate with energy, like the twitching limbs of a body anatomically dissected while it is still alive. It is as though all the pent up energy in the grid—the energy that often distorted its appearance, bent its verticals and horizontals to the flexible limit—has been released, an explosive release that is a more obvious demonstration of entropy than the homogeneous grid, as Arnheim notes. In Variation/Mutation (brown, blue, red, white) the modules of the grid float in space and seem selfpropelling. Like the grid, the module itself falls apart, becoming bits and pieces of geometrical debris. A more or less blurred grid—neat criss-crossing stripes of color, almost overwhelmed by ghostly loops (both have the look of dangling nerves)—looms behind the luminous geometrical chaos.

The effect is indeed fantastic—even more fantastic than the Identical/Variation paintings. Variation/Mutation (brown, blue, red, white) reminds me of Dubuffet’s L’Hourloupe works, with their so-called “sinuous graphisms.” In those works there is also a sense of perpetual motion and constant mutation and of playful fantasy. There is a graffiti-like spontaneity to Ellingson’s fragments, just as there is to Dubuffet’s face-figure fragments. In both cases the fragments fit together like a picture puzzle, although Ellingson’s puzzle seems incomplete—parts are missing, perhaps permanently lost, or dissolved in the flux of the background, as its whiteness suggests. And in both cases there is a sense of organic metamorphosis, however

5

inorganic the fragments look, whether they be geometrical or figurative fragments.

Ellingson’s paintings are doubly abstract: they are cunning geometrical abstractions, and they make cunning use of the abstract programs inseparable from computer technology. They are applied computer abstractions and abstract optical constructions.

And they make clear the connection of abstraction and ecstatic transcendence, evident in both geometrical and gestural abstraction from their beginning in the early twentieth century. Ellul writes that “technique has transformed man’s quest for the spiritual,” all the more so “in the societies that have as their avowed aim the maximal exploitation of technique.”2 In such societies—in our society—spirituality is expressed in and through technology. Technology is not only a means to the spiritual/transcendental end—an ecstatic high, such as we experience in Ellingson’s optical paintings—but a spiritual/transcendental end. Ellingson’s computer is inherently spiritual rather than simply a design instrument, just as the drawings and photographs it replaces have their own spiritual character, that is, ecstatic possibilities and erotic sensuousness.

The computer makes possible a new visual ecstasy. This ecstasy is implicit in its electronic processing—its seemingly instantaneous and even spontaneous electronic conversion of visual and verbal information into pulsing energy. (Information has been described as materialized energy waiting to be released by the mind.) The mindful energy of Ellingson’s paintings—their conceptual and expressive character—is self-evident. And so is their strong sense appeal. They show that sensing can still be ecstatic, a mode of transcendence—sensing is in-

nately ecstatic, ecstatic energy awaiting its release by art—in a highly technological society. All the more so when sophisticated technique is used to unite, seamlessly, the sense of sight and of touch—the former dramatically evident, the latter subliminally subtle, and both always ready to be refreshed by artistic experience—as in Ellingson’s masterpieces.

Donald Kuspit, 2006

Notes: Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (New York: Vintage Books, 1964), p. 420 2 Ibid., p. 421 1

Donald Kuspit is one of America’s most distinguished art critics. Winner of the prestigious Frank Jewett Mather Award for Distinction in Art Criticism (1983), given by the College Art Association, Professor Kuspit is a Contributing Editor at Artforum, Sculpture, and Tema Celeste magazines, and the Editor of Art Criticism. He has doctorates in philosophy (University of Frankfurt) and art history (University of Michigan), as well as degrees from Columbia University, Yale University, and Pennsylvania State University. He is Professor of Art History and Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He has received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, Fulbright Commission, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, Guggenheim Foundation, and Asian Cultural Council, among other organizations. His books include The Cult of the Avant-Garde Artist (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), The Dialectic of Decadence (NewYork: Stux Press, 1993), Idiosyncratic Identities: Artists at the End of the AvantGarde (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), The Rebirth of Painting in the Late 20th Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), Critical Reveries (New York: Allworth Press, 2000), and The End of Art (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Variation/Mutation (brown, blue, red, white)

6

7

Left: Identical/Variation (red) #1

8

Right: Identical/Variation (red) #2

Left: Identical/Variation (red) #3

9

Right: Identical/Variation (red) #4

10

Variation/Mutation (red, green, lavender, white)

11

12

Variation (red, blue, green, black)

13

Left: Identical/Variation (lavender, green, red) #1

14

Right: Identical/Variation (lavender, green, red) #2

Left: Identical/Variation (lavender, green, red) #3

15

Right: Identical/Variation (lavender, green, red) #4

16

Facing page: (Detail) Identical/Variation (lavender, green, brown, red) #2.

17

This page: Recent Work, Haines Gallery, 2006.

18

Straight/curved Variation/Mutation (black, blue, yellow, white)

19

20

Above: Identical/Variation (red, blue, green, black) series. Facing page: Stages of development.

21

Straight/curved Variation (blue, orange, yellow, white)

22

23

24

Left: Identical/Variation (black, blue, orange-red) no. 1

25

Right: Identical/Variation (black, blue, orange-red) no. 2

Semper Augustus, Charles Cowles Gallery, New York, December 9, 2004-January 15, 2005.

26

LIST OF WORKS Cover:

Page 12:

Page 19:

(Detail) Variation (red, blue, green, black), 2006.

Oil and encaustic on two panels. 36 x 100 x 2 in.

(Detail) Variation (red, blue, green, black), 2006.

Oil and encaustic on two panels. 36 x 100 x 2 in.

Straight/curved Variation/Mutation (black, blue, yellow,white), 2004.

Oil and encaustic on two panels. 78 x 72 x 2 in.

Page 2:

Page 13:

(Detail) Variation/Mutation (brown, blue, red, white), 2006.

Oil and encaustic on two panels. 36 x 168 x 2 in.

Variation (red, blue, green, black), 2006.

Oil and encaustic on two panels. 36 x 100 x 2 in.

Pages 14 and 15:

Page 4: Identical/Variation (red, green, black) #1, 2005.

Oil and encaustic on panel. 27 x 27 x 2 in.

Identical/Variation (red, green, black) #2, 2005.

Oil and encaustic on panel. 27 x 27 x 2 in.

Pages 6 and 7: Variation/Mutation (brown, blue, red, white), 2006.

Oil and encaustic on two panels. 36 x 168 x 2 in.

Identical/Variation (lavender, green, red) #1, 2005.

Oil and encaustic on panel. 36 x 36 x 2 in.

Identical/Variation (lavender, green, red) #2, 2005.

Oil and encaustic on panel. 36 x 36 x 2 in.

Identical/Variation (lavender, green, red) #3, 2005.

Oil and encaustic on panel. 36 x 36 x 2 in.

Identical/Variation (lavender, green, red) #4, 2005.

Oil and encaustic on panel. 36 x 36 x 2 in.

Page 16:

Pages 8 and 9: Identical/Variation (red) #1, 2006.

Oil and encaustic on panel. 20 x 20 x 2 in.

(Detail) Identical/Variation (lavender, green, brown, red) #2, 2006.

Oil and encaustic on two panels. 54 x 54 x 2 in.

Identical/Variation (red) #2, 2006.

Oil and encaustic on panel. 20 x 20 x 2 in.

Page17:

Identical/Variation (red) #3, 2006.

Oil and encaustic on panel. 20 x 20 x 2 in.

Recent Work, Haines Gallery, San Francisco, May 17-June 11, 2006. Installation. From left:

Identical/Variation (red) #4, 2006.

Oil and encaustic on panel. 20 x 20 x 2 in.

Variation/Mutation (brown, blue, red, white), 2006.

Oil and encaustic on two panels. 36 x 168 x 2 in.

Page 10:

Identical/Variation (lavender, green, brown, red) #1, 2006.

Oil and encaustic on two panels. 54 x 54 x 2 in.

(Detail) Variation/Mutation (red, green, lavender, white), 2006.

Oil and encaustic on two panels. 84 x 60 x 2 in.

Identical/Variation (lavender, green, brown, red) #2, 2006.

Oil and encaustic on two panels. 54 x 54 x 2 in Page 18:

Page 11: Variation/Mutation (red, green, lavender, white), 2006.

Oil and encaustic on two panels. 84 x 60 x 2 in.

27

(Detail) Straight/curved Variation/Mutation (black, blue, yellow, white), 2004.

Oil and encaustic on two panels. 78 x 72 x 2 in.

Page 20: Stages of development of Identical/Variations (red, blue, green, black) nos. 1-4, 2004.

Page 21: Identical/Variation (red, blue, green, black) no. 1, 2004.

Oil and encaustic on panel. 36 x 36 x 2 in.

Identical/Variation (red, blue, green, black) no. 2, 2004.

Oil and encaustic on panel. 36 x 36 x 2 in.

Identical/Variation (red, blue, green, black) no. 3, 2004.

Oil and encaustic on panel. 36 x 36 x 2 in.

Identical/Variation (red, blue, green, black) no. 4, 2004.

Oil and encaustic on panel. 36 x 36 x 2 in.

Pages 22 and 23: Straight/curved Variation (blue, orange, yellow, white), 2004.

Oil and encaustic on two panels. 36 x 132 x 2 in.

Page 24: (Detail) Identical/Variation (black, blue, orange-red) no. 2, 2004.

Oil and encaustic on panel. 66 x 46 x 2 in.

Page 25: Identical/Variation (black, blue, orange-red) no. 1, 2004.

Oil and encaustic on panel. 66 x 46 x 2 in.

Identical/Variation (black, blue, orange-red) no. 2, 2004.

Oil and encaustic on panel. 66 x 46 x 2 in.

Page 26: Semper Augustus, Charles Cowles Gallery, New York, December 9, 2004-January 15, 2005. Installation.

BIOGRAPHY Born 1964

2003

Lives and works in San Franciso, California

Matter & Matrix, Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery, Scripps College,

2002

Claremont, California (catalogue)

Bay Area Now 3, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco

(catalogue) A Chance Operation: 2002 Faculty Exhibition, Walter & McBean Gallery,

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2006

Recent Work, Haines Gallery, San Francisco

2001

2004

Semper Augustus, Charles Cowles Gallery, New York

2003

Ec/centric Compositions, Haines Gallery, San Francisco

2002

Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall, Fassbender/Stevens Gallery, Chicago

San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco

The Group Show, R.B. Stevenson Gallery, San Diego The Necessary Beauty, R.B. Stevenson Gallery, San Diego ExtraOrdinary: 2001 Faculty Exhibition, Walter & McBean Gallery, San

Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco

KABOOM!, Haines Gallery, San Francisco

Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall, Frumkin/Duval Gallery, Santa Monica

[climax], jennjoygallery, San Francisco

1999

Between Repetition and Insistence, jennjoygallery, San Francisco

1997

A Hankering..., Gallery 16, San Francisco

2000

1994

Flora and Fauna, FOOD HOUSE, Santa Monica

San Francisco

1992

The Princess and P., thesis exhibition, CalArts, Valencia, CA

Head Cheese, Ft. Haggis Gallery, San Francisco

People as Material, institution, California College of Arts and Crafts,

Icon-O-Pop, Frumkin/Duval Gallery, Santa Monica Light Fantastic, Walter & McBean Gallery, San Francisco Art Institute,

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

San Francisco

backroom, jennjoygallery, San Francisco Emotionally Annoyed, ESP, San Francisco

2005

Director’s Choice: Contemporary Art with Objects from Asia, Haines

Gallery, San Francisco

1999

Twofold: Collaborations on Campus, Richard L. Nelson Gallery (Project

emerge: Gen Art SF’s Premier Exhibition, San Francisco

Ad Infinitum: The Aesthetics of Repetition II, Haines Gallery,

1996

New American Talent: The Twelfth Exhibition, Austin Museum of Art at

San Francisco

Neo Mod: Recent Northern California Abstraction, Monterey Museum of Art, Monterey, California

Neo Mod: Recent Northern California Abstraction, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California

28

Group Exhibition, jennjoygallery, San Francisco 1998

2004

Jernigan Wicker Fine Arts, San Francisco

Room), University of California, Davis

Works by the Recipients of the 1999 Artadia Award to Visual Artists,

Laguna Gloria; Austin, Texas (Curated by Lisa Phillips; catalogue)

1995

Bloom, Cristinerose Gallery, New York

1994

FOOD HOUSE two year anniversary exhibition, Santa Monica

1993

Germinal Notations, FOOD HOUSE, Santa Monica Peculiar Paintings, Woodbury University; Burbank, California

The Big Spin: 2004 Faculty Exhibition, Walter & McBean Gallery, San

New American Talent: The Ninth Exhibition, Austin Museum of Art at

Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco

Laguna Gloria; Austin, Texas

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

AWARDS/HONORS/COMMISSIONS

Artner, Alan. “Amy Ellingson,” Chicago Tribune (May 17, 2002)

Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship, 2007

Baker, Kenneth. “Amy Ellingson at Haines,” San Francisco Chronicle (June 10, 2006)

Faculty Development Grant, San Francisco Art Institute, 2005

_____________. “’Bay Area 3’ show peeks into artists’ inner worlds,” San

Market Street Art in Transit Program Kiosk Poster Series, San Francisco Arts

Francisco Chronicle (October 30, 2002)

Barden, Lane. “Report from the FOOD HOUSE booth: the alternative space at ART/

Commission 2000.

Artadia Award to Visual Artists, San Francisco, 1999.

LA93,” Artweek (January 6, 1994) Bonetti, David. “‘KABOOM!’ is Summer Show to Beat,” San Francisco Chronicle

(July 7, 2001)

PUBLIC/CORPORATE COLLECTIONS

Cash, Stephanie. “Report from San Franciso: Surviving and Thriving,” Art in America (November 2002)

The Paul Allen Collection, Seattle, WA.

Coleman, Sarah. “emerge,” San Francisco Bay Guardian (July 22, 1998)

The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, HI.

_____________. “Emotionally Annoyed,” San Francisco Bay Guardian

Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Palo Alto, CA.

Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA

(February 2, 2000)

Eich, Maureen. “Amy Ellingson, Between Repetition and Insistence,” NYArts Magazine, (November 1999)

United States Embassy, Tunisia Wellington Management Company, LLP, San Francisco, CA.

Johnson, Ken. “Amy Ellingson: Semper Augustus,” (“The Listings”), The New York Times (December 24, 2004) Keats, Jonathon. “Double Vision: An Exhibition of New Diptychs Based on

TEACHING

Work by Three Bay Area Artists,”, San Francisco (February 2000)

Roth, Charlene. “Jac Chartier and Amy Ellingson at Frumkin/Duval Gallery,”

Associate Professor, San Francisco Art Institute, 2005-present.

Resident Faculty; San Francisco Art Institute, 2003-2005.

Artweek (March 2002)

Tromble, Meredith. “Bay Area Now 3,” Stretcher.org, (November 2002)

Visiting Faculty; San Francisco Art Institute, 2000-2003.

Turner, Mary Louise. “‘Neo Mod’ at the Crocker Art Museum,” Artweek (March

Visiting Faculty (Senior Lecturer); California College of Arts and Crafts, Fall 2002.

2005) van der Beek, Wim. “Amy Ellingson,” Kunstbeeld (March 2005)

Van Proyen, Mark. “Amy Ellingson at jennjoygallery,” Artweek, (February 1999)

EDUCATION

_____________. “San Francisco e-mail: Michael McDowell; Amy Ellingson, Carrie Lederer,” Art issues., (January1999-February 2000)

M.F.A., California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA, 1992.

_____________. “San Francisco e-mail: “Kaboom!” at Haines, etc.,” Art issues.,

B.A. (Studio Art) Scripps College, Claremont, CA, 1986.

29

(September/October 2001)

30

Statement

My interests lie in the practices of formal repetition, variation and mutation within limited serial systems and networks. The paintings consist of many interrelated layers of repeating geometric forms—lines, circles, arcs, and grids—that I design on the computer. I replicate these basic elements into an increasingly complex field that I then render in discreet layers of oil and encaustic paint. I capture ephemeral, computer-generated images, ghostlike diagrams of mathematical relationships, maps of evanescent data streams. From them, I create objects that physically assert themselves through slow accretion in the undeniable materiality and permanence of historical painting media. The translation from the ‘virtual’ to the ‘real’ is paramount.

I create groups of paintings that function as self-referential systems. Within these groups of closely related paintings, the works progress logically, beginning with pairs or quads of nearly identical ‘siblings’ that appear different because the order of the painted layers is shuffled. Otherwise, they are materially, physically identical in color, form, composition, and technique. Thus, each painting functions as a self-contained individual, and as a member of a group or network. The groups culminate in large works that exhibit an expansion of the compositional field—a disintegration of the regularity of the forms, and an increasing spatial perspective. These works represent a ‘break’—a shift, a digression—or perhaps, a beginning or an ending. Differentiation within the closed system allows for comparison and the assertion of identity. ‘Familial’ repetition within each group of paintings is a means of suggesting multiplicity and transformation through the language of abstraction.

My paintings are sui generes, complete in and of themselves, and as free of external reference as possible.

The repetitive nature of my practice expresses my belief that the ubiquity of pattern that shapes and defines existence and that constitutes all identity is deeply significant. I have immersed myself in a study of repetition and difference, dissolution and resolution, sameness and variety, and I am interested in the way that identity is asserted through subtle difference, much as individual identity is expressed in nature through minute difference in genetic coding. Slight formal distinctions between related paintings address fundamental issues of digression versus conformity, divergence versus convergence, and individuality versus community.

Amy Ellingson, 2007

Facing page: Works in progress, 2004-2007.

31

This catalogue includes works from the following exhibitions: Recent Work, Haines Gallery, San Francisco May 11-June 17, 2006 Semper Augustus, Charles Cowles Gallery, New York December 9, 2004-January 15, 2005

Š2007 Amy Ellingson

Photography by R.R. Jones, except: Page 17: Monique Deschaines Page 20: Amy Ellingson Page 26: Bill Orcutt Page 30: Allison Danzig

32