Radical pulsating patterns of life
Just after Impressionism left some painters feeling that art was getting too loosey-goosey, Pointillists such as Georges Seurat and Paul Signac strove to make painting more scientific. They applied colors in tiny dots and let them mix in our eyes.
Today, Xylor Jane takes their experiments further. At Parrasch Heijnen Gallery, the artist applies colors in even tinier dots, often arranged so that they represent numbers in aesthetically charged sequences.
The show is a tour de force of delicacy and nuance, its devotion and generosity putting visitors in touch with otherwise invisible patterns and rhythms that structure the cosmos.
No two of Jane’s 10 intimately scaled paintings look alike. Each changes radically as you move close and step away. That’s because the dots of paint Jane have applied are smaller than the head of a pin and pointed, like the pin’s business end. They cast mini-shadows.
Some of Jane’s paintings resemble the impossible offspring of fractals and crazy quilts and Navajo blankets and diamond-studded jewelry, their subtly pulsating patterns appearing to be kinder and gentler versions of Op Art’s jarring compositions, perhaps what Agnes Martin would have painted if she were into hallucinogens.
Others recall signs illuminated by LEDs, their flashing numerals transformed into constellations of various densities. Still others do both: interweave numbers and patterns in intoxicating geometries that evoke infinity while remaining grounded in the present.
With great patience — and a large magnifying glass — Jane has made paintings that invite you to do two things at once: Look at them and through them, relishing the tactility of their surfaces and peering into spaces that seem to reach far beyond what is possible.
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