Add Viewer, Stir Gently

Minipaintings by Lucio Pozzi at BCB Art in Hudson

by Beth E. Wilson, May 29, 2007

I once heard NYU professor Neil Postman say, while musing some years ago on the then-hot topic of “cyberspace,” that although we understand that term to mean something like the place where we focus our consciousness while we’re surfing the Web, sending e-mail, and the like, for him the big question is: Where is our consciousness the rest of the time?

An exhibition of minipaintings by Lucio Pozzi now up at BCB Art in Hudson demonstrates the aptness of Postman’s observation.

Much has been made of the deceptively neutral space of the classic “white box” gallery—all those silent surfaces that invisibly frame the contemporary experience of art, yet without which the presumed autonomy of the modern painting would be impossible. The architecture fundamentally structures the experience but is ultimately meant to be forgotten in this kind of encounter with art. (You can see the ultimate extension of this logic in the new MoMA, which, with the simple introduction of clothing racks in place of painting and sculpture, could easily become the world’s largest Gap store.)

Pozzi’s work stands in stark contrast to this willful erasure of the viewing context. His minipaintings—none more than seven inches tall—work the logic of architecture from the inside out, spreading their influence far beyond the relatively small surface area of the paintings themselves. Typically, he arrives with just a suitcase full of paintings, selecting a few and installing them in the gallery space in question in order to maximize their presence. At BCB, the paintings are all one-and-one-quarter-inches deep, the canvas stained to match the predominant color of the finished work, ranging from flat grey to spring green to ochre. Over that base he lays two broad bands of saturated, contrasting colors (orange/black, blue/green, et cetera), which are largely obscured by a thick coat of paint matching the base-level stain. While it’s still wet, he digs into this top layer to reveal tantalizing bits of the bright colors underneath—small passages that activate the surface of the painting, just as the small painting itself activates the broad, even surface of the wall itself.

As a sort of coup de grace, Pozzi dots the top level of the works with spots of the underpainting’s colors, once again inverting/subverting simple concepts like near and far, top and bottom, major and minor. The depth of the stretchers lends a sculptural dimension to the paintings, which then initiates a dialogue with the architecture in which they’re placed—on one large wall at BCB, a single painting is hung far to one side, uncannily emulating the size and position of a thermostat fixture on the opposite side. The subversiveness of this move is both subtle and powerful. When was the last time you saw art that intentionally made you think about electrical outlets and light switches?