MARK GROTJAHN

In his paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, Grotjahn investigates color, perspective, seriality, and the sublime. The concluding entries in the Backcountry series featured in this exhibition see him again draw inspiration from the experience of rural American landscapes, specifically those from his ski and fly-fishing tours in the remote backcountry of western Colorado. While the works contain an element of pictorial representation, hinting at a snowy mountain descent or starlit nocturnal pass, their primary commitment is still to abstraction, specifically the nuanced layering of line, tone, and texture. Continuing to produce variations on an identifiable style and format, Grotjahn builds on a dynamic rhythm that transcends simple visual record to achieve a unique formal and emotional complexity.

The richly expressive paintings in Out of Country are dominated by Grotjahn’s broken arcs and partial ellipses—as well as by his bold red, yellow, green, and blue coloration—and the centers of their weblike compositions tend to be more densely active than the edges and corners. The artist further disrupts the surfaces with “slugs,” small rolls of paint created from excess impasto. But while still suggestive of an abstracted signature, these additions are applied more sparsely, signaling a shift away from their previously gridlike arrangement and toward a more camouflaged embedding. Grotjahn also continues this work on cardboard mounted on linen—a support that he first employed in his Face paintings (2003–17)—using the material as a base to carve into as well as paint on. The cardboard also contributes a distinctive texture of its own that is visible intermittently depending on the thickness of the paint that covers it, occasionally lending the facture a striped, “ploughed” appearance.

As an evolution of the Capri series, which Grotjahn began painting in 2016, the Backcountry paintings see him move to clarify his subject, stripping back his line at times while also more densely and aggressively obscuring the picture. In these final paintings of the series, Grotjahn continues his use of structural and gestural strategies rooted in Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism on a robust scale creating a direct, visceral relationship to the form. Through this process he is able to convey a sense of awe of the natural world and an impression of his own discrete experience within it.