“Geometry is the starting
point, but I try to let all of these other things bleed into it.”
Jason Karolak
The internet came into being
in the 1960’s during the height of the Cold War as a communication network that
could survive a nuclear attack. Over time as the broader community adopted the
personal computer it morphed into what we call today the World Wide Web with a great
many people interested and involved in its ongoing design. It evolved from the
quintessential horse into the camel we have today; inherently practical but not
particularly elegant.
So it is with the abstract geometric paintings of Michigan
born artist Jason Karolak. Working
concurrently on both large (measured in feet) and small (measured in inches)
paintings Karolak explores complex linear structures and irregular geometrics
often painted in vivid and sometimes florescent colors. As he told Studio
Critical “The small paintings get built up
over time. These are thick, dense, and have shallow spaces. There is a packing
in of information and energy. The large paintings move in a very different way.
In these I get more into the physical and gestural activity of making a
painting, into my body. These become more tweaked and open, and hopefully more
lightweight. The energy is moving outward instead of in. In both sizes I am
left with a form or thing, a sort of projection, something internal made visible.”
Where the Dutch painter Piet
Mondrian’s geometric inspired works of formal grids with judiciously placed blocks
of color reflect an elegant aesthetic, Karolak’s works reflect a more seemingly haphazard
approach. As the New York Time’s Roberta Smith said in her 2008 review of his
work “Jason Karolak is showing canvases in which shaky geometric images creep
across the color spectrum one mosaic like stroke at a time.”
Karolak’s mappings talk to these
structures that support the increasing visual communication of the 21st
Century. Through our Facebook, Twitter and other social media accounts we add
to World Wide Web’s growth in a disorganized outpouring of personal concerns
which whilst cathartic is hardly ever elegant en mass.
A self titled exhibition of
Karolak’s recent works will be on show at New York’s McKenzie Fine
Art from the 13th of February to the 22nd of March.
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