REVOLUTION REVOLVE an exhibition by Theresa Byrnes March 19 – April 1, 2009
rogue space 509 W26th Street, Gallery 9E New York, New York 10001
The coin rolls towards the camera and executes a spinning drop onto the watercolor paper. Another plinks off on the floor. Theresa methodically wheels around her big watercolor paper circle made of circles, tossing and placing pennies, dollars, yen, lira, pesos.
From Byrnes’s two recent performance art pieces, a simulated oil spill (TRACE), then a meditation on what constitutes consciousness (Theresa Tree) to her latest paintings with circles, Byrnes deals in large abstractions, she calls this ‘Abstract Realism’. Circularity relates to boundaries, cells, repetition, life cycle and ‘boobs’ she joyously exclaims, “the first mammalian desire, the thirst for life”. Many of the circle works are paired, and have titles like ‘spooky boobs’, ‘mother monster’, or ‘boob spiral’. ‘It is the form we are first familiar with, from birth, our mother’s breast.’ Byrnes explains.
The ‘wish ponds’, large disks about the scale of DaVinci’s Proportions of Man, address the title of the show, ‘revolution – revolve’, evoking, as her works often do, geologic scenes; seas, rivers, bio-zones, the ice caps. Layers and layers of circle shapes and finally coins of all sizes and countries make up the larger circle, overlapping, just touching, enveloping. Over all, lakes and fractal ink creations are formed, and make patterns around the coins cast over the surface.
Watching a video (private viewing) of the process, I sense a prescient vision of President Obama tossing money onto a troubled world, trying to bring it back into balance, and consider Theresa’s words: “It is our duty…to contemplate and be hyperconscious of our patterns of behavior and belief.” “Life is to revolve, to repeat – but it is also to evolve, breakthrough & explode.” We are headed towards a revolution, a great turning of the world.
“In tossing the paper disks and than coins I became aware of the wish. I contemplate the coin, the planet and the maternal inside the physicality of painting, throwing to the wind, to chance, hoping for change and transcendence. The paradigm is dramatically shifting, to think within the boundaries of ownership and sale is narrow. The great circle is moving toward another way of existing, for what is a coin but a fickle disk.”
www.theresabyrnes.com
