AMANDA MANITACH
Constellation of Expressions
Amanda Manitach is obsessed with the written word, the immutability as well as the immortality of them and traces this love back to her childhood, being the daughter of a charismatic Christian minister who instilled in her the inherent power of scripture.
“It was a desire to connect to people universally through text,” says Manitach. “Embedded within this practice was the tradition of communal speaking in tongues. An interest in the pliability and power of language as both a symbolic and concrete system underscores much of my work.”
Manitach’s current exhibition at Winston Wächter Fine Art in New York City consists of a series of large-scale drawings depicting phrases “drawn from poetry, personal
reflections, banal musings of celebrities or phrases overheard from strangers.”
“The statements themselves coalesce to form a constellation of expressions that vacillate between the poles of vulgar, violent, gorgeous, phrases culled from personal musings, aphorisms, fragments of forgotten poetry or the banal, pithy, heartbroken musings of stars or strangers,” says Manitach.
Some of the works are merely a phrase, some longer poems while others still find meaning in the pairing of seemingly disparate words or ideas. The words are placed against a backdrop of “lush patterning drawn in colored pencil and inspired by Victorian domestic wallpaper design.”
The key to this is drawing. Manitach gets up close and personal in these new works, drawing each line, making the marks, allowing her hands to rub over the paper, smudging the pencil lines and revealing the process behind the work.
“They are rooted in drawing,” says Manitach. “The drawn mark has always held endless fascination, as a document of labor, a marker of the passage, of time, the most rudimentary tool for communication and expression.”
Art and words intersect the verbal and visual mediums in interesting and thought-provoking patterns. Many artists don’t like to write about their work. Others have said quite often that if they could verbalize what they are doing they would be writers rather than painters. Yes, so much validation of visual work comes from written criticism.
“In the age of internet especially, everything fades,” says Manitach. “Words trend like a breath and are lost. In an era of digital ephemera and brevity, I can play the role of arbiter and author, immortalizing the thoughts and words that give shape to collective consciousness and expression.”