Angeline Rivas, "Double Window", 2018, ballpoint pen on paper, 50 x 38.5 inches

October 1-October 25, 2018

Near the end of Luis Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou, the female character leaves an apartment that is presumably located on an upper floor of an urban building, a slight breeze blows through her hair, she smiles and waves at someone off-screen and then the next shot places her on a beach. The scene unfolds like a subconscious train of thought, the abrupt juxtaposition eclipsing narrative arc and structural convention. Similarly, in Maya Deren's second film At Land, the central character climbs from a beached driftwood tree root onto the ledge of a table mid dinner party. These transitions- from city to landscape, from outside to inside, alone then together- occur without intent or awareness, they are leaps made by feelings' reasoning. Of her films Deren has said that she is compelled by "the inner realities of an individual and the way in which the subconscious will develop, interpret and elaborate an apparently simple and casual incident into a critical emotional experience." This is as much a matter of editing as it is of image.

In Angeline Rivas' black ballpoint pen drawing on paper "Double Window," the visual elements are arranged intuitively as though on display. The formal decisions of placement parallel an emotional experience of simultaneously being inside looking out and outside looking in, being in front of and also behind. The elements are composed in a combination of some broad solid lines and simple 2D geometries with black and white variegated textures, repeated and often doubled (arch windows, square bases, inverted triangles, planetary circles, plant structures). There are familiar contours and qualities that allude to interiors (vessels, plinths, arrangements of cuttings) as well as to what exists outside (sedimentary rock, atmosphere, architectural details) though the scale of the former are larger (leaves, containers) and the latter are smaller (planets, windows) than expectation. The composition's constituent parts can be viewed sequentially rather than altogether as a synthetic whole, to the effect of conceptual montage and flickering.

There are between two to sixteen idiosyncratic drawn elements in "Double Window," depending on whether the elements are perceived as connected or separate. Some appear indivisible from one another while others are spaced independently, though all seem to be placed in the same plane. The imagery is composed on an invisible grid structuring the highly formalized composition and creating intentional relationships between forms. The visual elements are variably stacked, arranged in front of or behind one another, intersecting, abutting, and in one case apparently splattered. The surfaces of the elements are inked precisely and consistently with occasional unexpected blotches- a split, a scratch, a scar, or a splotch- expertly folded into the overall textures. The assignment of cosmic surfaces to basic shapes is akin to Meret Oppenheim's surrealist treatment of everyday objects with an unexpected skin/fur, though these textures could also be of the earth, like the landscape carved by glaciers and water, sweeping ridges exposing a section of sediment layers.

The relationships of the forms give the sense that they are perambulating around the picture plane, rearrangeable, not fixed. The peculiar dynamism of the objects within the compositional space of the paper is the most difficult thing to which to pin language. To do so would require a verb that would signify a pre-given condition (circularity) and a two-part action (movement within and around)- in other words, both being and becoming. A whole different language would be needed, built on different foundations- then again, the verb environ (v. surround; enclose) could be an apropos choice.

Clockwise from the upper right, three flamingo lilies and two halved sword fern fronds reflecting an unidentified, irregular light are arranged in a vase-like form. A diagonally rippling shaded inverted triangle pierces a marbled and stained circle resembling the topography of a gaseous planet, the arrow-like point similar to a pin on a map. This vase-arrangement hovers galactically just above a rectangular mass that appears as both frame and plinth.The frame-plinth form, taking up nearly two-thirds of the bottom half of the drawing, is outlined in a decorative border of three bold parallel lines and encases two framed arch windows.

Each window pane is shuttered with five horizontal shaded stripes of variable widths yet consistent descending arrangement of value gradients that are both architectural as well as atmospheric. The thick black outlines of these arches stand out and become a psychological focal point, strongly referencing the recurrent archways prominent in Georgio de Chirico's multiple piazzas d'Italia. Signifying a threshold to another space and all that goes along with it- mystery, intrigue, perception, function- Rivas' double windows/shade-shuttered archways compel as strongly as they resist access to a deeper space within the drawing.

To the left and reaching all the way up and along the left-hand side to the top of the composition is a stack of five forms. At the bottom, a densely and deeply etched black square is the heaviest and darkest object in the entire composition. It supports a diamond shape that is shaded symmetrically along its horizontal middle axis. The points of the diamond appear to be either impaled into forms above and below or floating directly behind the form, the support of the overall object a feat of physics. The interruption of an almost accidental single scratch on the surface of the diamond and the background- a rare departure from a rendered object- confounds the pictorial space.

A scribbled splatter pattern representing a splash of ink blots the margin of space between the object and the edge of the paper and defaces another flat planetary globe above the diamond. An inverted isosceles triangle- truncated, embedded, or situated just behind the circle and perhaps even connected to the diamond below- operates as a planter for the fifth form. It is a bulbous unearthly flora that emerges and leans to the right as though reaching to make contact with an aforementioned split fern, thusly forming a secondary arch that echoes the double window archways. Below this archway created by the plants in opposing top corners, a seeming shadow of a wavy/curvaceous object with two right angles and accented by shifting, pleated gradient sits squarely on top of the plinth-arch, making the only point of apparent contact in the entire drawing.

Within the vernacular trajectory of drawing-for-drawing-sake, the charcoal drawings of Georgia O'Keefe from 1915 drop recognizability of form in favor of the interplay of tone and negative space folding in on one another, revealing imagery that is more the result of drawing as a thought process than drawing as a means of representation, but not surrealism per se. The "fold" as a figure and material effect is alive in O'Keefe's paintings as well, however the drawings evidence the process through which the folding of space is achieved with drawings' facture, smudging, and evidentiary marks. In the works of Judy Chicago's 1973 "Potent Pussy" trilogy of drawings, we see another type of formal pursuit achieved as the result of drawing in and of itself, in this case circular, rhythmic and resolved precisely within a concentric compositional space.

Ballpoint pens are ubiquitous, rudimentary and indelible- usually free, often discarded and typically used for signing things in offices or doodling during phone calls. Rivas' use of ballpoint pen is striking because of the scale of the work, the range and virtuosity of tonal, textural effect and nuance, and the sheen that results across sections of the surface of the drawing. The matte, pristine negative space of the paper is highly absorbent of our attention, suggesting the possibility of limitlessness just beyond the drawn objects. The effect of fugitive pigments reveals the passing of time in the creation/existence of the work through the tonality of black inks at various stages of intensity and fading.

Rivas employs shading only in the interior of the objects which are continuously hatched, depicted by implied lines providing a space where everything is/nothing is flat. Shading is a rendering device that relies as much on context as on internal logic. Shading and value shifts describe volume and space, but without cast shadows, light sources and surface, shading takes on a superficial and illusory quality reminiscent of laminates, veneers and surface effect, highlighting the delicate conditions of plasticity itself. The surfaces of the objects in Rivas' drawing conjure the use of high-definition and scaled-up faux-wood grain laminates in Ettore Sottsass' consoles, low-tables, and armoires of the 1980's. Sottsass' practice especially vis-a-vis the Memphis design group was a fashion-forward affront to the mass-production friendly tenets of modernism. Sottsass once stated in an interview that Memphis sought to express the principle "form swallows function" as an inversion of the modernism mantra "form follows function." Rivas' drawing is likewise irreverent and the dynamic it sets up squares off Sottsass-esque details and Brancusi-esque modernist austerity. The result is sweetly disorienting formalism alight with an approach to drawing suspended between tactility and illusion.