Kelly’s painting, typically flat and cleanly geometric, features three orange lozenges stacked on a white ground. Von Heyl topples that configuration into a horizontal format and doubles the number of lozenges, which stretch across the 17-by-67-foot-long wall. The orange shapes make a modernist echo of the arched doorways in the Renaissance Court that’s defiant yet grudgingly respectful, like an adolescent strutting in front of a parent.
That same spirit ignites von Heyl’s next addition to the orange-and-white: black scribbles that look as if a kindergartener had come through and drawn across the mural. A serpentine, undulating central gesture reprises the rhythm of her lozenges, although with sharp angles and added flourishes such as radiating lines, a concentric triangle, and abrupt passages of dark, dense doodles.
The suggestion of violation is mildly shocking, but the image itself — the way it teases the orange forms — is electrifying. Raw scrawl collides with the simplicity, clarity, and polish of the Kelly quotation. One of Kelly’s hallmarks is the balance between figure and ground — the white in his painting carries no less weight than the orange. Von Heyl’s aggressive black lines pay no heed to boundaries between orange and white, and consequently they keep step with Kelly’s creed, dancing with but not dominating the bold orange-and-white pattern.
What they make of place Von Heyl’s painting is tailored to its site, with concrete references to the museum’s architecture and its collection. Down the hall, “Place as Idea,’’ put together by curator of contemporary art Susan L. Stoops, examines far less tangible delineations of place.
“The other title for this show is ‘This Is Not a Landscape Show,’ ’’ Stoops said in an interview.
