Portray Between the Machine and the Hand

For a part of Could 2023, Lydia Dona’s summary artwork may very well be seen in three separate New York exhibitions, every of which provided a distinct perspective on what she has been as much as since 2008,  30 years after she moved to New York within the late Seventies from Jerusalem and commenced making a reputation for herself. Though Dona had her first solo present in New York in 1979, she didn’t start exhibiting commonly till the mid-Eighties, when the artwork world’s consideration was dominated by Neo-Expressionism and Neo-Geo, and lots of artists had been enjoying out the tip of Modernism. 

From the mid-’80s till the early ’90s, Dona exhibited typically in New York, however her reveals turned extra sporadic after that, and her work by no means turned branded, like that of others of her technology, reminiscent of Peter Halley. Along with her three Could exhibitions, together with a bunch present, Schema: World as Diagram at Marlborough Gallery, curated by Raphael Rubinstein and Heather Bause Rubinstein, I had the chance to get a contemporary perspective on a well known artist of the Eighties.

Within the catalogue accompanying Schema: World as Diagram, Raphael Rubinstein wrote: 

Dona is preoccupied with the city setting. These are work created with a eager sense of the invisible infrastructure that retains a metropolis operating and, much more, of the fixed breakdowns of city methods. Of their very range of sources, their multiplicity of overlapping languages, I see Dona’s work as reflections of the place the place they’re made, New York Metropolis, this dynamic web site of “borderline engagements.”

Dona started exhibiting within the mid-’80s, and her work was seen in connect with Jonathan Lasker, Fabian Marcaccio, and David Reed — artists within the relation between the direct software of paint and the photographic presentation, the unique and the copy, amongst different issues. Inside all these approaches was a priority with the handmade and the mechanical. Along with her work and visible vocabulary, Dona will get proper to the center of the issue, the connection between the machine and the hand. Her work deliver collectively abstraction and illustration, the hand-drawn mark and the projected picture. By means of her interweaving and vary of paint purposes, she defers a conclusion concerning portray’s prospects, largely as a result of she likes paint’s mutability — what may be achieved while you deliver collectively oils, acrylic, enamel, metallic paint, and laminated iron oxide powder, all of that are in “Excessive Influence” (2016). 

The 9 massive work within the exhibition Lydia Dona, put in within the foyer atrium at 375 Hudson Road, curated by Jay Grimm, are dated from 2008 to 2018. Within the largest, “From Warmth to Sub-Zero” (2008), the artist defines the territory she has explored ever since that point, utilizing pictures derived from automobile manuals together with completely different sorts of paint. Whereas Rubinstein’s commentary gives a great way to know what Dona is doing, it doesn’t go far sufficient, which can be one motive her work just isn’t thought of by most within the artwork world on the identical degree as Peter Halley and Jonathan Lasker. She has not prioritized crucial concept in her work. She has not revealed a e book of essays or issued a manifesto, nor has she connected her work to a crucial narrative.

Dona creates line drawings of automobile engines, mechanical elements, gadgets, and tubing, most frequently utilizing an overhead projector. The picture could also be superimposed upon an summary discipline, which is prone to be layered and composed of formally distinct areas that vary from graphic distinction (mild to darkish) to tonal shifts (i.e., orange towards rust crimson in “From Warmth to Sub-Zero”). She could partially obscure the picture with a splash or gestural mark, creating friction between picture and mark, the mechanical and the handmade, management and give up. However her juxtapositions, layering, and superimpositions by no means appear arbitrary; she works all the things out in a portray course of that appears open ended relatively than formulaic. She exploits the actual properties of her medium in ways in which bind the disparate parts collectively. 

In “Platinum Journeys” (2016), a thick, encrusted puddle of black enamel within the higher center of the canvas stands in sharp distinction to the remainder of the portray. Versus what appear to be crudely drawn spools and a crank shaft, {a partially} obscured linear picture close to the puddle just isn’t readily identifiable. Is it mechanical or natural? 

A visit to New York in 1915 impressed Francis Picabia to concentrate on equipment, and he attributed his exploration of machine drawings to his expertise of the USA. After shifting to New York, Dona started exploring the aftermath of what Picabia referred to as “the genius of the fashionable world.” Does the black puddle discuss with the waste we now have produced within the title of modernity? Is it leakage from a machine or a sign that the machine has damaged down? Are the tubes and engines making an attempt to revive portray? 

The anomaly we encounter in Dona’s work is an correct reflection of her personal deep-rooted uncertainty concerning portray’s prospects, in addition to resistance to reaching conclusions concerning the failures of modernism. For greater than three a long time, this ambiguity has generated enigmatic abstractions that be a part of collectively legible and indecipherable elements. Dona treats completely different points of abstraction, together with gesture and monochrome, equally to machine manuals, as discovered materials. What makes her work greater than a sequence of appropriations is her love of paint — as each materials and course of. 

Schema: World as Diagram continues at Marlborough Gallery (545 West twenty fifth Road, Chelsea, Manhattan) by way of August 11. The exhibition was curated by Raphael Rubinstein and Heather Bause Rubinstein.

Lydia Dona continues at 375 Hudson (375 Hudson Road, Soho, Manhattan) by way of February 2024. The exhibition was curated by Jay Grimm.