Draft: Epicenter

Sue Crawford Elise Ferguson Richard Tinkler Catalogue essay by Frances Lazare September 16 - November 2

PATTERN BEYOND PAINTING

by Frances Lazare

In 1908, infamous architectural theorist and author of the polemic “Ornament and Crime,” Alfred Loos, defined ornament as the almost obsessive “urge” to animate surface—anything from a façade to a forearm—with repeating patterns, markings, and designs. The primal (and indeed, erotically charged) “feelings of pleasure” Loos identifies as inherent to the accumulation of Image detail: Elise Ferguson, Lantern, 2023. Courtesy the artist and Romer Young Gallery. decoration on support haunt the treatise, which maligns any flourish that exceeds the imperatives of function in fin-de-siècle design. Loos’ paranoid repression of ornament—as a kind of irrational and undisciplined subconscious of modernist abstraction—places him firmly within a group of critics curator Emily King recently dubbed “ornament authoritarians.”¹ In the mid-to-late nineteenth century, these “authoritarians” attempted to construct encyclopedic taxonomies of form grounded in the perceived universalism of pluralism—or, the trans-cultural desire to append abstract patterns to the surface of otherwise utilitarian instruments, from manuscripts to machinery. Stemming from a distinctly modern homology, the pursuit of this sort of global compendium—the most famous of which is Owen Jones’s The Grammar of Ornament (1856)— prompted critics, even those as skeptical as Loos, to articulate the wide-reaching elegance of and authority of ornament within the built environment, broadly construed; the imperatives of abstraction, in other words, far beyond the wall-bound canvas.

The contemporary prescience of ornament, or what the art historian Oleg Grabar calls “visible geometry on surface,”² is on display in Epicenter at Pazo Fine Art, where dazzling and pattern-dense canvases by Sue Crawford, Elise Ferguson and Richard Tinkler deploy a particularly ornamental mode of abstraction—predicated on the visual logic of repetition— as a powerful intermediary between the 1.

2.

Emily King, “What is it with Ornament and Crime,” in Joanna Ahlberg, ed., The Clamor of Ornament: Exchange, Power, and Joy from the Fifteenth Century to the Present (New York, NY: The Drawing Center, 2022), 31.

Oleg Grabar, The Mediation of Ornament (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 136.

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artwork, as a bounded physical object, and the world of the beholder. The dynamic arrangement of abstract pattern on support, in other words, functions as a means of invoking a broader world of form, encompassing tiles, textiles, and even the ornamental motifs of the natural world. The works in Epicenter thus recall the architectural and domestic origins of twentieth-century abstraction—no matter the antidecorative fantasies of those “ornament authoritarians.” One need only think of William Morris’ wallpapers, Edouard Vuillard’s dizzyingly patterned interiors, and, more recently, Cynthia Carlson’s and Betty Woodman’s immersive installations. The sustained interdependence of abstract painting and the built environment inform the artists in Epicenter, whose ornamental canvases are quasi-architectural and tectonic, evoking geographies outside the gallery.

Installation view, EPICENTER. Photograph by Vivian Doering.

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Architectural metaphor is especially central to Elise Ferguson’s Op-esque abstractions. Ferguson’s Signatures (2022), a largescale work that exists somewhere between painting, sculpture, and print, sits physically and conceptually at the center of the show. As is customary in her practice, Ferguson generated this design in Photoshop and subsequently burned the pattern onto a silkscreen matrix, through which ten to fifteen layers of pigmented Venetian plaster were pushed on primed support (here, panel, though she just as often works on paper).

There is an almost masonlike nature to this process, in

which material is troweled on layer by layer until the surface reaches a near sculptural level. The result is a kind of “portable fresco,” whose complex ballet of redoubling lines evokes the snaking architectural flourishes of Viennese Jugendstil in both form and highly saturated hue. Such architectural associations are far from incidental. Ferguson embraces the decorative implications of abstraction, citing her early training in color theory and design history with her mother, a women’s clothing designer, and stepfather, an architect. The interconnection between the fine and decorative arts has thus long guided her practice; before turning to painting, Ferguson created gauche portraits of her floorboards and urethane sculptures resembling midcentury linoleum tiles elevated to the level of a monument.

Installation view, EPICENTER. Photograph by Vivian Doering.

The interconnection between abstraction and decoration is particularly evident even in Ferguson’s works on paper. On comparatively small-scale canvases Honey and Reduce (both 2023), the artist’s complex designs are pared to a singular motif and rendered via the same process as her paintings on panel, allowing her to achieve a smooth, precise surface in large and small-scale works alike. The balance between this appearance of perfection and the effect of the hand-made—a feature in all of the painter’s work—is especially apparent in the paper works, whose edges are left stippled and raw, a reminder that paper is, in fact, a textile made of copious fibers woven together weft over war. These unframed works, with their bright decorative forms and visible threads, are as much wall hangings as paintings.

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Richard Tinkler’s drawings, too, evoke the pleasures of architectural ornament. These visually complex, geometric webs comprise thousands of primarily straight strokes of colored pencil that resemble “psychedelic tapestries.” The artworks’ algebraic appearance results from a similarly methodical process: Tinkler stores his copious drawings in a precisely organized series of albums, the archival logic formalized in his titles: ‘Book 7 Volume 1 Page 21.1,’ and so on. As soon as Tinkler sells one of his hundreds of patterned works on paper, he produces a duplicate in its place, drawing on a common vocabulary of colors, shapes, and designs.

Drawings and paintings alike thus emerge from a self-multiplying, internally consistent logic, and artworks pulled from storage become palimpsests for new creations. Each drawing is, therefore, interdependent on the ones that come before it and generative of those that come after, functioning like a single tile in an ever-expanding tessellation.

Sue Crawford, Testudo #3, 2023. @ Sue Crawford

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Richard Tinkler, Book 7 Volume 1 Page 21.1, 2022.

Courtesy the artist and 56 Henry

The expressive potential of drawn line similarly enlivens Sue Crawford, who, like Tinkler, fills the surfaces of her sensuous abstractions with thousands of nearly identical strokes. The organic and improvisational character of these acrylic marks, however, connotes a visual language all her own. Of the three artists on view in Epicenter, Crawford’s works alone evoke both the logic of the historic handicrafts and the visual patterns of the natural world. The painter’s overlaid, snaking line work recalls both the movement of interweaving threads sewn together in the process of textile construction and the shape of a stream as it travels through the ground. In her Testudo series, Crawford takes topographic metaphor to its furthest, layering organic forms in earthen hues one atop the other such that they resemble layers of sediment built up over the passage of geologic time.

Well-versed in the history of craft and design, Crawford’s dual allusion to textile and topography is apt. Indeed, the decorative motifs found in nature have long informed the language of ornament, as on the face of Art Nouveau architecture, where curvilinear motifs conjure twisting tendrils and otherwise organic rhythms of flora and fauna.

Crawford’s work thus reminds us of the privileged place of ornament in both the built environment—and thus in political, social, and civic life—and the natural world, evoking, along with Ferguson and Tinkler, those “feelings of pleasure” that, freed from fixed meaning or signification, are embedded in the fabric of visual experience far beyond “art” as such.

Frances Lazare September, 2023

Installation view, EPICENTER. Photograph by Vivian Doering.

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PLAT ES

Sue Crawford Between Dog & Wolf, 2023 Signed on the reverse Acrylic gouache on canvas 45 x 40 in (114.3 x 101.6 cm)

Sue Crawford, Between Dog & Wolf (detail), 2023

Sue Crawford Small Sounds, 2022 Signed on the reverse Acrylic gouache on canvas 45 x 40 in (114.3 x 101.6 cm)

Sue Crawford, Small Sounds (detail), 2022

Sue Crawford Testudo #1, 2023 Signed on the reverse Acrylic gouache on paper 29 x 22 1/2 in (73.7 x 57.1 cm)

Sue Crawford Testudo #2, 2023 Signed on the reverse Acrylic gouache on paper 29 x 22 1/2 in (73.7 x 57.1 cm)

Sue Crawford Testudo #3, 2023 Signed on the reverse Acrylic gouache on paper 29 x 22 1/2 in (73.7 x 57.1 cm)

Sue Crawford Dominant Myths #6, 2021 Signed on the reverse Acrylic gouache on paper, wax resist 16 x 16 in (40.6 x 40.6 cm)

Sue Crawford Dominant Myths #5, 2021 Signed on the reverse Acrylic gouache on paper, wax resist 16 x 16 in (40.6 x 40.6 cm)

Elise Ferguson SIGNATURES, 2022 Pigmented plaster, pencil on panel 50 x 75 in (127 x 190.5 cm)

Courtesy the artist and Romer Young Gallery.

Elise Ferguson Brick, 2023 Pigmented plaster on panel 30 x 30 in (76.2 x 76.2 cm)

Courtesy the artist and Romer Young Gallery.

Elise Ferguson Kelly, 2023 Pigmented plaster on panel 40 x 30 in (101.6 x 76.2 cm)

Courtesy the artist and Romer Young Gallery.

Elise Ferguson Morning Glory, 2023 Pigmented plaster on paper 22 x 15 in (55.9 x 38.1 cm)

Courtesy the artist and Romer Young Gallery.

Elise Ferguson Lantern, 2023 Pigmented plaster on paper 22 x 22 in (55.9 x 55.9 cm)

Courtesy the artist and Romer Young Gallery.

Elise Ferguson Reduce, 2023 Pigmented plaster on paper 22 x 15 in (55.9 x 38.1 cm)

Courtesy the artist and Romer Young Gallery.

Elise Ferguson Willoughby, 2023 Pigmented plaster on paper 22 x 22 in (55.9 x 55.9 cm)

Courtesy the artist and Romer Young Gallery.

Elise Ferguson Honey, 2023 Pigmented plaster on paper 22 x 15 in (55.9 x 38.1 cm)

Courtesy the artist and Romer Young Gallery.

Elise Ferguson Mister Gate, 2023 Pigmented plaster on paper 22 x 22 in (55.9 x 55.9 cm)

Courtesy the artist and Romer Young Gallery.

Richard Tinkler L6FB1.1, 2023 Oil on canvas 72 x 48 in (182.9 x 121.9 cm)

Courtesy the artist and 56 Henry.

Richard Tinkler F6B64.1, 2023 Oil on canvas 40 x 30 in (101.6 x 76.2 cm)

Courtesy the artist and 56 Henry.

Richard Tinkler Book 6 Volume 1 Page 3.6, 2022 Ink on paper 14 x 11 in (35.6 x 27.9 cm)

Courtesy the artist and 56 Henry.

Richard Tinkler Book 7 Volume 1 Page 18.3, 2022 Ink on paper 14 x 11 in (35.6 x 27.9 cm)

Courtesy the artist and 56 Henry.

Richard Tinkler Book 6 Volume 1 Page 11, 2020 Pen on paper 14 x 11 in (35.6 x 27.9 cm)

Courtesy the artist and 56 Henry.

Richard Tinkler Book 7 Volume 1 Page 21.1, 2022 Ink on paper 14 x 11 in (35.6 x 27.9 cm)

Courtesy the artist and 56 Henry.

Richard Tinkler Book 6 Volume 1 Page 4.4, 2021 Pencil crayon on paper 14 x 11 in (35.6 x 27.9 cm)

Courtesy the artist and 56 Henry.

i n stal lat i o n vi ews

Installation view, EPICENTER. Photograph by Vivian Doering.

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Installation view, EPICENTER. Photograph by Vivian Doering.

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Installation view, EPICENTER. Photograph by Vivian Doering.

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Installation view, EPICENTER. Photograph by Vivian Doering.

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t h e art ists

SUE CRAWFORD b. 1976, American

Informed by the legacies of the Minimalist and Light and Space movements, Sue Crawford's paintings transcend into ethereal realms, weaving intricate narratives that give form to pattern and cause to texture. Her artistic oeuvre acts as a profound exploration of interconnectedness, employing layered pathways and networks of line, color, and tone. Crawford's creative process initiates with deliberate choices surrounding foundational forms and colors, guided by a reflective process that is then infused with the contemplative act of repetitive mark-making. Drawing inspiration from a rich knowledge of indigenous textile and craft traditions rooted in the natural world, her artistry makes reference to geological strata, topographical maps, as well as gathered knowledge from the ever-changing landscapes and visual ideas she encounters during her regular forays in the woods. Her compositions evolve into personal terrains of interwoven adjacent lines, where Crawford asserts the painted line as a deeply interior experience, each layer serving as a space for exploration and constant change.

Sue Crawford was born in 1976 in Santa Barbara, California, and grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting from Massachusetts College of Art in 1998 and lived between the US East and West coasts for years before moving to Baltimore in 2007, where she was introduced to the fields of painting restoration and conservation, processes that have informed her current art practice in technique, momentum, and material. Recent exhibitions include a solo show, Lines are Feelings Too, at the Institute of Contemporary Art (Baltimore, MD), and group shows at Pazo Fine Art (Kensington, MD), Towson University (Towson, MD), Photograph by Andy Compton ©Sue Crawford Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), and Institute of Contemporary Art (Baltimore, MD). Crawford is a twotime Sondheim Semifinalist.

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ELISE FERGUSON b. 1964, American

Elise Ferguson's work centralizes the art of pattern to create graphic and dynamic compositional spaces.

Using rhythmic motifs rendered through layers of screen-printed, pigmented plaster, she blurs the boundary between mechanical reproduction and artistic precision. Bold, carefully paired colors bring her work to life, while closer inspection of the textured surfaces gives her works a handmade, object-like body. At the crossroads of painting, sculpture, and printmaking, Ferguson's abstract creations celebrate purposeful imperfection. Her mark-making gestures evoke mathematical puzzles, alphabetic scripts, and geometric variations, interweaved with influences from clothing patterns, architectural embellishments, musical notations, and hieroglyphic writing. This results in artworks that evoke a tension between structured systems and disarray, balancing on the edge of refinement and spontaneity. Through a process-driven approach, Ferguson explores spatial dynamics and the malleable nature of optical perception.

Photograph by Jane Wesman ©Elise Ferguson

Elise Ferguson (b. 1964 Richmond, Virginia) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York City. She holds a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1988) and an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago (1995). She has exhibited extensively in the United States and Europe, including solo exhibitions with Halsey McKay Gallery, Romer Young Gallery, ODD ARK-LA, White Columns, and 57W57 Arts. Her work is in the public collections of Progressive Art Collection, The Cleveland Clinic, Microsoft, Google, the RISD Museum, and SUNY Albany Museum, among others, as well as in many private collections.

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RICHARD TINKLER b. 1975, American

Richard Tinkler's works embody an instinctual and labor-intensive approach, where intricately layered paintings and drawings weave a narrative that is simultaneously structured and hallucinatory.

Rooted in the foundational imagery of geometric grids, Tinkler's rigorous method builds upon a common visual language that flows from one artwork to the next.

These works employ copious layers superimposed upon one another, creating woven structures where geometric shapes seem to float, drift, and meld, evoking psychedelic tapestries and metaphysical realms.

Tinkler's meticulously rendered drawings, characterized by exhaustive, kaleidoscopic abstractions exploring complex geometries, are central to his practice. Within his paintings, his subtle use of layered colors, each stroke painstakingly recorded, conceals underlying, intricate compositions through the mesmerizing repetition of his rhythmic brushwork, celebrating Photograph by Nick Naber © The Coastal Post the physicality of oil paint. Tinkler's work, while technically remarkable, offers a visual delight, revealing his unbridled joy in the act of painting. Tinkler emerges in today’s art world as a distinct voice championing the enduring relevance of abstraction.

Richard Tinkler (b. 1975 Westminster, Maryland) lives and works in New York City. Tinkler received a BA in 1999 from the University of North Texas and an MFA in 2003 from Hunter College. He has exhibited extensively in New York and other cities, including solo exhibitions at Sebastian Gladstone Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Albert Merola Gallery, Provincetown, RI; and 56 Henry, New York, NY.

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Published on the occasion of the exhibition EPICENTER September 16 - November 2, 2023 Essay © 2023 Frances Lazare Designed by Jesús Balza Printed in Chicago, Illinois Photographs by Vivian Doering Cover: Small Sounds, 2022 © Sue Crawford We would like to thank Frances Lazare for the contribution of her insightful essay. We are especially grateful to Michael Abrams, Jesús Balza, Vivian Doering, Mandy Cooper, Valentina Deshler, Era Myrtezaj, Zeke Estes, Joey Piziali, Sue Crawford, Elise Ferguson, and Richard Tinkler for their unwavering support in the production of this exhibition.

Pazo Fine Art Washington D.C | Kensington, M.D info@pazofineart.com www.pazofineart.com © 2023 Pazo Fine Art All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any forms or by any means, electrical, mechanical, or otherwise, without firts seeking the permission of the copyright owners and publishers. Every effort has been made this seek permission to reproduce the images in this catalogue. Any omissions are entirely unintentional, and details should be addressed to the publishers.

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