Incommensurabilities? Paint and the Expanded Real at the Bromfield Gallery
Boston, MA – The works on the walls at the Bromfield Gallery exist somewhere between painting and sculpture. They’re limited to rectangles and hung the way two-dimensional works would be, but each piece is being consumed by thick paint that strikes the viewers eyes as well as a couple centimeters of their space.
Martin Mugar’s works are the first you encounter — miniature cotton candy colored paint clumps taking over boards of different shapes and sizes, exploring both the surface of paint and its impact on the viewer. “This is not a world of people and things, nor of the distinct forms of abstract rationalism,” declares the Bromfield Gallery’s artist statement for the show. “The individual units of the painting are an impulse themselves, as Mondrian’s flat units are questioned as a basis for painting.” Mugar’s colored paint clumps assume patterns of different textures, creating windows on a cotton candy field in the wind.
…
