Peter Alexander: Drips

listening with

your eyes The severance of perception from emotion is a near impossible feat. Color is emotion.

I hadn’t seen my daughter in almost three weeks. As she approached, a strong sense of change took me by surprise. Had she grown? Had her face matured? I squinted to try and get clarity on this metamorphosis or the nostalgia that was tricking my powers of perception.

Art imitates life. Art subsumes life. Transduction of light into neural signals is an effort

in futility, the eye an impotent device. Like staring at a solar eclipse, Peter Alexander’s plastic fields of translucent color burn the retina. Poured, tinted resin is detonated by light, bringing to mind molten pink lava, suddenly cooled and frozen in time.

Drops of pigment are measured precisely by the Alchemist. The curing process, how-

ever, has a life of its own: a drop in temperature, moisture in the Pacific air or the sense of post-coital elation are powerful agents, subverting precision. Each work is as differ-

ent from the next as they are similar: identical twins’ genetic material spliced in two, duplicated as perfect imperfections.

Scale has changed. 40 inches of color, the edges of the field now in one’s peripheral vision, surround the viewer. The desire to compare works is fractured to two walls at a time. Blurred? Vibrating? Rothko’s Chapel. Visual information obliterates sound. Spinning like a child, dizzy and disorientated and blissfully happy.

—Tim Nye

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12/5/11 (large flo yellow drip diptych) 2011, urethane, two panels, 46 x 41 in.

12/20/11 (large pale turquoise drip) 2011, urethane, 46 x 41 in.

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12/12/11 (large pale turquoise drip) 2011, urethane, 46 x 41 in.

10/6/11 (large brilliant drip) 2011, polyester, 46 x 41 1/2 in.

photographs by brian forrest nye+brown | 2685 south la cienega blvd. | los angeles, ca 90034 gallery@nyeplusbrown.com | +1 310 559 5215