In “Dal segno’’ (the title is a musical term indicating that the performer should repeat a passage), Wu offers a progression of repeating watery images in a long, stair-stepping horizontal. The whole captures the crests and white-capped splatters of a turbulent sea. Each passage has several similar elements; each takes a slightly different perspective. Sheet music staffs run beneath the waves, emphasizing how the water’s motion is akin to recurring motifs in a symphony.
“Where Does a Cloud Begin’’ features two parallel bars containing depictions of clouds against a lime-green sky (or is it grass, seen from above?). Each of the several images is the same, rotated differently from the one beside it. Graph-paper diagrams beneath and on either side of the paintings echo the turning of the clouds, so art’s rendering of this sky can mingle with science’s.
Wu brings a lot to the table. In terms of technique, she creates seamless imagery out of photographs, paper ephemera, and paint. Conceptually, she juggles mathematical theory and art theory, data, imagery, and notation, like so many colored balls. You don’t have to see or understand them all to grasp what she’s getting at: that all the perspectives are components of something larger, something similar, and something perhaps impossible for us, with our limited viewpoints, to ever fully comprehend.
Contemplative colors
Rob Douglas brings the elements to bear on his shiny, deep, exuberantly painterly works at Chase Gallery. He dilutes pigments in water and watches them run and catch over the surface of his wood panels, which he rotates as they dry. The Santa Fe artist also uses wind - real and man-made - and hauls paintings outside into the desert sun to bleach. He applies many layers of color washes, and draws, too. The delicious result, often sealed under a glossy coat of varnish, reminded me of looking through a glass-bottomed boat into mysterious depths.
