Alex Weinstein | Power Line Paintings
The power line paintings are grounded, like most of my work, in observation. The colors are tuned to the evening hues of the Los Angeles skyline, over the Pacific with all that that implies: languid surfy sunsets and beach moments - the contemplation of the horizon (the abyss!) and its myriad associative possibilities. Looking west one night, and focusing on the colors of the waning light, I realized how gracefully the drooping power lines framed the scene. The lines’ presence was at once irritating in its disruption of a classically sublime vista with human presence and also compositionally very satisfying: the crisp lines hanging across the distant, blurry colorwash provided a visual schism that I liked. In the paintings, the lines act dually as compositional counterpunches to essentially abstract color fields and also literally as hanging wires across an urban nocturne. I have been interested in the fusion of traditionally antithetical esthetic concerns for a long while now and making paintings that can function as both figurative and abstract compositions is at the core of this work. It allows me to move along experimenting with exuberant color (LA sunsets are trippy, man!) and flirt with color field/minimal/light and space practices while making work grounded, at least in part, in the act of observation. The drawn power lines cinch these paintings effectively. In a narrative capacity, they force a depth of field, foreground/background read. In purely abstract terms they function strictly as sharpened foils to the soft-focus color washes that dominate these pictures.