Monday 9 March 2015

Julie Mehretu

I regard the work of painter Julie Mehretu to be concerned with a post-modern technological sublime. Her large scale paintings take inspiration from the buzz or energy of the modern city, a cacophony of marks and shapes allude to the overwhelming sensory input of urban centres, including sound, movement and space. Architectural forms appear and disperse in a fragmented collage of divergent intentions. We are presented with a momentarily overwhelming amount of visual choices, everywhere you look the image is in flux.

"I'm interested in the experience you can have while looking... information that coalesces into something that comes out of the painting towards you. The amount of time that goes into these is very apparent, and that can be overwhelming. It becomes a physical experience" Julie Mehretu, http:/whitecube.com/artists/julie_mehretu/

The overwhelming physicality of her work, evoked through scale and the apparent labour intensiveness of each image, is something which I wish to explore in my own work. I also admire the tangible sense of depth and movement she has created through her use of optical effects  of colour and perspective. My images have what may be considered as a shallow depth of field, I will explore how deepening pictorial depth effects the reading of my images.





































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