SOFT WHITE ANDREW HAVENHAND
Point of Contact Gallery Staff Sara Felice Managing Associate Director Rainer Wehner Preparator Weisi Liu Financial and Administrative Specialist Hailey Seiferheld Graphic Designer Natalie McGrath Collections Assistant Tere Paniagua Executive Director of Cultural Engagement
This exhibition is made possible thanks to the generous support of The College of Arts and Sciences, and the Coalition of Museums and Art Centers at Syracuse University.
Andrew Havenhand
SOFT WHITE February 8 - March 12, 2018
MAKING ART AS IF LIFE MATTERS the Work of Andrew Havenhand Ann Clarke BORN IN YORKSHIRE, ENGLAND, Havenhand attended art school in Leeds and Cardiff College of Art in Wales. In 1980, he moved to New York City, and attended the Brooklyn Museum Art School then moving to Richmond, where he completed his master’s degree in painting and printmaking at Virginia Commonwealth University. He moved to upstate New York in 2007, where he is Painting Coordinator in the School of Art at Syracuse University, living with his wife and two charming rescue dogs. They also have a home in Ocracoke, which is part of North Carolina’s Outer Banks’ region. I share this information not only for its biographical value, but to highlight the importance of place in Havenhand’s life and work. He has spent his life walking the Yorkshire Dales and the beaches of the Outer Banks’ — wild and remote places governed by weather and landscape where time slows, and travel is measured by a persons gait. Havenhand embodies the ability to be fully present in any moment he inhabits. This is a constant during his impressively long walks, as well as when in his home studio producing work. Havenhand has described his work as, “gentling over time.” His previous work included angles, a mix of edges and complex color systems, whereas the work in Soft White is, in fact gentler, a refined narrowing of range in his toolbox. This work invites an adjustment of how we see, not unlike the eyes adaptation to changes in lighting that allows the differentiation of subtle and complex juxtapositions of color, value and form.
Reveling in his materials, Havenhand is driven and compelled, with a fierce focus in his practice, while remaining considerate and patient with the work. His is a process of negotiating myriad modifications and adjustments as he brings the pieces forward to the point of knowing they are complete and whole. This deeply thoughtful and fully engaged process also pulses with joy. There is a great sense of play, in fact a celebration of it. Some pieces get to the edge of the realm of absurd wonderment, while others land the viewer firmly within it — bringing curiosity to life in those open to play. Gifts unfold when Havenhand’s time and attention are met in kind. Havenhand’s work has always been based in abstraction, which is a technique for arranging complexity. It allows for presenting pieces of visual information in ways that are meaningful by establishing a level of simplicity, an interface which allows a person to interact with the system of meanings in the artwork. While doing research for this essay, the arena of software development provided the most resonant language on abstraction. Joel Spolsky, in The Law of Leaky Abstractions, states “All non-trivial abstractions, to some degree, are leaky.” (1) While the inherent leakiness of abstraction is a nemesis in software development because it can create potentially confusing interfaces, in art, as in Havenhand’s work, therein lies the magic. The simplifying (and unifying) elements of these eleven abstract mixed media pieces are the biomorphic shapes, layers of lace and a very narrow range of color and value. The overall shape of the pieces as well as their respective internal elements are curved, odd and clearly deliberate, both for the looming large scale pieces as well as the smaller works. Acres of lace in slightly varied hues and pattern are layered to create subtle shifting planes. Encapsulated shiny painted shapes and lighting fixtures direct focus
by material contrast. The command of a narrow range of color and values denies the distracting seduction of color as well as the easier definition of space that value shifts can provide. Havenhand’s abstractions are leaky. The work will find its own place in each viewers’ eyes and mind, like a guided meditation. In Havenhand’s words, “Together the work forms a dialogue referencing the applied and fine arts, natural phenomena, domesticity, time, ritual, geography and our emotional condition.” It can be about finding peace amid the chaos, as Fleet Foxes’ album Crack-Up is described by Amanda Petrusich in Pitchfork (2), and about seeing and not seeing, what is illusory, known and not yet known. I close with the last three lines of the poem To These Eyes by M.S. Merwin, which I feel captures the spirit of Havenhand’s pursuit. … As long as I look Hoping to catch sight Of what has not yet been seen (3)
(1) Joel Spolsky, “The Law of Leaky Abstractions,” November11, 2002; https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/11/11/the-law-ofleaky-abstractions/ (2) Amanda Petrusich, “Life and Death on Manhattan Island: Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold Returns,” June 5, 2017; https:// pitchfork.com/features/profile/10088-life-and-death-on-manhattan-island-fleet-foxes-robin-pecknold-returns/ (3) M.S. Merwin, Garden Time (Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2016) 14.
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