Weekend Edition 43

Ellsworth Kelly

Study for Blue White, 1960

Woman. It's the lips you kiss. It's the back, you caress. It's the hair, you trace. It's the wit that sharp as a knife that opens up to you. And still she is a black hole of unknown mystery.







Marshall

Bill Jensen

at Cheim & Read

WITH COLOR XXVIII, 2009

Woman (The big dark figure in the center). She could be secretively dark. Outside there is a bright sunny day, when everything seems simple, fun and easy to understand. She is full of unknown wisdom. The mystery pulls you in. You want to dive into the deepest darkest corner. You are marching willingly into a web of lust, forbidden pleasures and unending secrecy.

Barbara Kasten

at Bortolami Gallery

Construct LB-5, 1982

Curiosity drives you. Just as a butterfly flies to a light (a construct in the lower left corner), you are moved toward a black hole of Unknown (upper right corner). Your wings are desire(red) and mystery(black). After getting some height(accumulating some knowledge) and crossing some lines (red line from the center to upper middle), you understand the more you know the less the subject is clear. The desire to explore the unknown really opens up the wings(the red figure in the right part of the painting).

Katharina Grosse

at Johann König (Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

Untitled, 2010

Women need to create an aura of mystery around them. The woman is always conscientious about her look. She is always in control of her outer image. She takes the created mystery(black), wraps it tight with her mind and will (violet). Then she invents her style(yellow) to beautify the parcel. And on top of all that she puts a layer of naivety, carelessness and lightness(the blueish green).

Dan Bayles

at François Ghebaly Gallery (Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

Interior #2, 2009

Voyeurism. Everyone likes to peep. You know it is wrong. You know it is not appropriate, but still you slightly separate those slides to peek. Our fondness of mysteries and  our craving for new things win over the moral. We always are looking for something new, something unknown, a mystery. But there is not much to look at. The entire mystery is the neighbor mowing his lawn.

Weekend Edition 22

Jackson Pollock

Male Female

This is a date. You can feel a lot of flirtation in the air with undertones of desire. Information intake is in the overdrive (ears, eyes are all over the place). Some things are put in the open( the white rectangle in the center). But most of them are behind folding screens that with time would be taken down. Some bits of personal information are strung together. The missing pieces are calculated behind the scenes(the black rectangle with white chalked numbers). There are a lot of unknown - mystery that really attracts you.

Ulla von Brandenburg

Ulla von Brandenburg at Pilar Corrias (The Armory Show 2012)

Kulisy, 2010

 This is the Theater. The backstage. It reminds you a ship: a wooden deck, ropes, curtains(sails). It is a magical ship that is ready to take you to the sea of imagination. It is a mysterious place. Each curtain partially opens the next space. This partial uncovering lures you. You want to find behind every curtain something interesting, new and exciting.But if you get all the curtains up you will see that this is only your imagination.You will realize that it's only big empty space.

Weekend Edition 16

Robert Motherwell at MOMA

Personage, with Yellow Ochre and White, 1947

You are reading a book. It is a about a small village There are several plot lines, but everything is pretty simple and predictable. So you are trying to understand why this book is so popular(a magnifying glass - black lines in the middle creating a rectangle and a oval). But then  a new  character is introduced. he is a real hero. he does everything right. He is perfect, too perfect(yellow oval in the upper  center). You learn that he has some sort of mystery from his past(black shadow around yellow oval). Now the character looks much more realistic. the mystery sucks you in. You start to see the whole plot in absolutely different light (the ochre band over the top ).

Weekend Edition 5

Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh

The night makes everything look mysterious. People assign divine attributes to the unknown (the dark brown structure on the left). The stars have been celestial inhabitants. But people gave them human properties. Thus what we "see" in the skies is a reflection of what is going on on Earth - in the village, under the cover of darkness. The stars are persons and flows are relations and feelings that people share.