Gridwork

A painting is a grid, initially and fundamentally defined from the outside in by the rectangle of the canvas. The most evocative of the works by Tim Raymond now at the C.G. Jung Center play against this generality, and the grid emerges from within the work.

Sometimes the grid is the warp and woof of the canvas material, overlain by a thin layer of paint in pale blue and related tones that then seems to have been gently scraped so as to reveal the minute contours of the woven fabric.

Sometimes the grid consists of drawn lines, perhaps in conté crayon, leaving subtle relief verticals and horizontals the overpainting covers but does not conceal.

The subtlest of the inner grid revelations occur in two “scroll” works on linen paper, featuring boxy right-angular doodles and what looks like the result of soft rubbing or smudging of the paper with some blackening matter just enough to bring out the fine weave pattern of the linen.

Boxes and right angles are recurrent motifs in these works, one of which, called Border Town, presents stacked box forms in muted reds and browns for the most part. The overall imagery is vaguely reminiscent of ancient Pueblo cliff architecture. The deep earth tones contribute to this possible reference.

Another large work is called Imperfect Storm and seems to represent a storm at sea and ship in peril. A wash of dark blues and purples and array of askew horizontal and vertical grid lines evoke a great vessel foundering or about to founder on rocks.

Most of this art could be called abstract, but a few works depict inchoately represented human figures. In several other works, the subject matter could be anything anyone would care to make it. A ridge of mountains in the remote distance. Or the ridge could be an architectural skyline.

But more than abstract or representational, the subject matter seems to be about the fundamental conditions and materials of the art of representation. One work seems to be about the interesting way a slightly viscid ink—a suggestion of ink and oil—blots on paper.

The Raymond exhibit continues through April 30.

—jack foran