R. H. Quaytman and the monocular pull of the single painting

R. H. Quaytman spoke about her installation at Barbara Gladstone with Frank Exposito. This project was created for a pavilion designed by Solveig Fernlund at the contemporary art museum and botanical garden Inhotim in Minas Gerais, Brazil.

I began by gessoing in black and yellow hues a full set of eight panels in the pattern of a Fibonacci spiral. The sizes of my panels are based on the golden section—they all use the ratio 1:1.618—and they nest. For Brazil, I decided to paint the pattern of the spiral generated from this ratio as the base for nearly all of the paintings. The pavilion is also based on this well-known shape that’s found everywhere in nature. It turned out that this “ground” had a spinning or spiraling effect that I could not have predicted. When hung on the walls of the pavilion, which have been designed with the same proportion, the paintings seem to spiral and point outward into the landscape of the botanical garden. Since one of my main concerns has always been to find a way out of the monocular pull of the single painting and into a hieroglyphic or lateral legibility and movement, this was a great discovery for me. more

R. H. Quaytman: O Tópico, Chapter 27, Installation View

R. H. Quaytman: O Tópico, Chapter 27, Installation View