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Levels, studied complexities

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Levels, studied complexities

1994
intaglio on Gampi paper laid down on Lana Gravure
19 3/8 in. x 22 1/4 in. (49.21 cm x 56.52 cm)
Henry Melville Fuller Fund, 2003.31.6

Terry Winters
American, born 1949

Description

Terry Winters’s Models for Synthetics Pictures is a set of twelve engraved, or intaglio, prints on separate sheets of a Japanese tissue paper, called Gampi, laid down on Lana Gravure paper in hues of red, blue, and yellow, and gathered into a numbered portfolio. The highly systematic, densely packed, abstract compositions share a web-like structure. In the center of the first print, Systems, a Graphic Architecture, is a blue circle that appears almost like a nervous system. Connected on its left is a threading network of red that spans the entire length of the left side; on the right appears a similar abstraction of line in yellow. Variations on these primary colors are also present, as a result of a complex process of overprinting. By combining a variety of different printmaking techniques, the artist has rendered the twelve images with richly textured black lines and colors of great intensity and variation. The prints are the result of a collaboration between the artist and three master printmakers at Universal Limited Art Editions, a leading fine art printmaker.


Context and Analysis

Winters’s body of work testifies to the ongoing viability of abstract painting and picture making. A self-described “image junky,” Winters centers his practice on construction or creation from a variety of available objects, a process called bricolage. His visual language synthesizes organic and technical elements derived from fields as diverse as computer visualization, mathematical analysis, and medical imaging. He draws inspiration from botanical anatomies, biological circulatory and nervous systems, color spectrums, architectural renderings, and fractal geometry. He makes use of mathematical theories, such as chaos, knot, and string theory. The artist himself has noted: “Technical images offer something readymade. That is, found images, technical images, offer us something no one made. Although they are the product of human activity, these images also seem free from subjective decision-making. And the Internet amplifies this; it offers images made by no one and everyone. I use this found imagery as a model, to see how images can be torqued or tweaked, made more poetic.” 1


The biomorphic imagery in Models for Synthetic Pictures invokes the structural inner workings of both the organic and the schematic or purely conceptual. Elaborate networks of latticed lines resemble gauzelike stretches of pulled taffy, cross-sections of honeycomb, an aggregation of crystals in a snowflake, the Technicolor gossamer of soap bubbles and oil spills, the roots of a rhizome, or shifting cellular forms under the scrutiny of a microscope. The organizing principle behind these prints is the expressive dynamic of the hybrid. Winters once remarked, “In a way, I want the opposite of a breakdown. My approach uses construction to provoke unpredictable, surprising images that emerge and become recognizable.” 2


Rather than bringing order out of chaos, these images ultimately render disorder in a recognizable, if ever-shifting shape. Irregular grid geometries make the familiar seem unfamiliar, while separating the systematic from its purely analytical context. They hover somewhere between immediacy and highly postured deliberation. On the one hand, the images are ecstatic and deceptively spontaneous, while on the other, they are methodical without being stripped down to the strictly bare mechanical. Winters has conceded that the images are “autonomous and at the same time suggest multiple associations or readings.” 3Titles given to individual prints, such as The rate of color change, The rate of transparency, or Light rays, trajectories of, hint at the backstories behind their composition, while retaining the potential for shifting values of interpretation. The prints are at once crowded with meaning and uncommitted to it, cerebral without limiting the aesthetic potency of the image.


Connections

This work extends the conversation about the possibilities of abstraction as exemplified by mid-century works that transform data into a metaphorical or abstract vision. One such work is Agnes Denes’s print Flying Half Bird: An Organic Space Station in the Currier collection (Currier, 2009.16 ). Another is Joan Mitchell’s abstract painting Cous-cous (Currier, 1992.2.1), which showcases the raw and expressive energy of applying pigment to canvas by reveling in plays of color, form, and density. Winters expands upon this approach by introducing more direct allusions to recognizable visual material.


Written by Grace-Yvette Gemmell

Notes
1Quoted in Traps 2012.
2Terry Winters in conversation with Phong Bui, David Levi Strauss, and Peter Lamborn Wilson, Brooklyn Rail, December 12, 2008: http://www.brooklynrail.org/2008/12/art/in-conversation-terry-winters (accessed June 29, 2014).
3 Quoted in Traps 2012.

Bibliography

“Drawing and Writing with Terry Winters.” World Literature Today, March 1, 2006.

Princenthal, Nancy. “Interview: Terry Winters.” Art in America, February 1, 2009: http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/magazine/interview-terry-winters/ (accessed June 29, 2014).


Sojka, Nancy. Terry Winters Prints 1982–1998: A Catalogue Raisonné. Manchester, VT: Hudson Hills Press, 1999.


Traps, Yevgeniya. “Studio Visit: Terry Winters.” Paris Review, April 10, 2012: http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2012/04/10/terry-winters/ (accessed June 29, 2014).


Exhibition
2004 Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH, March - May.

Provenance
G. W. Einstein Company, Inc, New York, NY
Purchased by Currier Museum of Art, 2003


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