JOYCE ANITAGRACE: Curvature of the Earth
Rosenberg Gallery
1
Wave After Wave of the Earth that Spins, while mounted to canvas, is more of a sculptural work. It marks a new direction in Anitagrace’s work. The burnt wood extends out of the picture plane and begins, as artist Lygia Clark states, “leaving the wall to gain the world.”
www.joyceanitagrace.com
Photographs by Matthew Paul D’Agostino
2
Joyce Anitagrace’s body of work in the exhibition Curvature of the Earth concerns several inter-related ideas: the intersection of philosophy and mathematics, the act of mark-making and marking of time, and the concept of the horizon line as optical illusion, painting convention, and an edge that divides as well as connects. The experience of the horizon line is most poignant when one faces an immense vastness, nothing in the way as far as one can see. Standing at the edge of the water, the sea and the sky meet at the horizon line. This, of course, is due to the limits of our vision. To paraphrase the novelist Clarice Lispector: The sea is only delimitated by the line of the horizon because of our human incapacity to see the curvature of the earth.
3
The concept of the horizon line is related to that of the timeline. Both are conceptual tools that simplify phenomena that are outside of human perception. The visual representation of a timeline crystalizes the illusion of time and history as progressive, a forward movement in space. Anitagrace’s work questions these concepts and concerns a state (of hope, of ecstasy, of being awake) that is without culmination. In that state, hope is not the ending point, but a continuous present, that is ever accessible.
4
Taken as a whole, Joyce Anitagrace’s exhibition Curvature of the Earth concerns a space of engagement that is a continuous present, a curve that extends around the globe, which itself is in constant motion. There are no ending points in these works of art and no single beginning or point of entry for either artist or viewer. The point is to begin and begin again continuously.
JOYCE ANITAGRACE: Curvature of the Earth SEPTEMBER 8 – NOVEMBER 3, 2014 ARTIST’S RECEPTION
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 6-9 P.M.
Rosenberg Gallery DIRECTIONS
GALLERY HOURS
Baltimore Beltway, I-695, to exit 27A. Make first left onto campus.
9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday – Friday 410.337.6477
The Rosenberg Gallery program is funded with the assistance of grants from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency funded by the state of Maryland and the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Baltimore County Commission on the Arts and Sciences.
The exhibit is free and open to the public.
www.goucher.edu/rosenberg
Cover Homage to Rachel Carson, 2014, acrylic and oil on canvas, 42” x 52”
3 Greater Than / Less Than, 2014, acrylic and charcoal on canvas, 62” x 62”
1 Wave After Wave of the Earth that Spins, 2014, burnt wood, charcoal, and acrylic on canvas, 58” x 58”
4 Starting Out Now / Começando Agora, 2012, acrylic and graphic on paper, 50” x 53”
2 Above and Below, 2013, acrylic, pumice, and oil on canvas, 60” x 48”
15061-3102 09/14