Cynthia Nadelman, catalogue essay
Sandra Lerner: Empty and Full, New Paintings
Sandra Lerner deftly synthesizes a variety of interests and
influences. She is an artist who has studied calligraphy with
Japanese masters and who has personally adopted Taoism and the
teachings of Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu. She embraces classic
Abstract Expressionism's leanings toward Asian philosophical
and esthetic precepts.
There are sections in her paintings that absolutely savor of
Chinese landscape painting and of calligraphy. Sometimes an
entire painting feels that way, sometimes it is one of her window-like
rice paper collage elements that feels or looks that way.
Lerner begins a work by pouring and painting on immense unstretched
canvases placed on the floor, Jackson Pollock-style. From these
she cuts out sections that inspire her, on which she then begins
the next stage of painting. Sometimes those initial and later
layers contain such elements — in addition to paint — as
sand and marble dust of varying coarseness and tone, which imbue
the work with a combination of shine and translucency. Sometimes
she pencils in grid-like patterns. These straight, geometrically
arranged lines delicately echo the effects of the collaged boxes
and windows in her more materially layered paintings. Both lines
and boxes have a structuring effect on these otherwise free-flowing
paintings.
The calligraphy itself, which looks very much like writing
but is not, serves mainly as an expressive design element, a
painterly passage. It can be reminiscent at once of such nature
imagery as a bird in flight or a solitary reed. Or it can call
to mind the combined impression of poetry and history in an
inscription down the side of a Chinese painting. These dashing
linear elements — full of controlled abandon — present
a counterpoint to the orderliness of the grid-like structuring
elements. All of these painting events occur almost subliminally,
mediated by washes and textures that create the symphonic backdrops
against which these solo outings take place.
What Lerner has created are paintings that anyone familiar
with the language of Western abstraction will be able to grasp.
They are richly layered, while retaining a marvelous sense of
space — or "breath," the word she uses to title
the individual works. She calls her show "Empty and Full,"
and that dichotomy is really what the works embody. They are
full of knowledgeable painting strategies, yet also refreshingly
"empty" able to breathe. They are full of color, yet
almost neutral, pale or scrim-like in effect. They are replete
with useful and interesting contradictions.
To turn to the most challenging of these — Lerner's mixture
of West and East — her work invites the question: how
Asian is it? One need simply think of a hypothetical non-Western
artist who has mastered traditionally Western painting techniques.
One looks for evidence of native traditions, instances where
the two cultures meet or collide, some sign, be it ever so subtle,
that the artist is aware of the contradictions and symbioses.
Lerner projects just such an awareness. Her work has for some
time exemplified what we might now call "post-regionalism,"
as mixing and borrowing of cultures takes place the world over.
It is a breath of air.
—Cynthia Nadelman, 1999
view all of Sandra Lerner's Breath
paintings
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