Graham Parks at Feigen Contemporary

Art in America, Oct, 2002 by Michael Amy

Graham Parks's first solo exhibition comprised nine small square paintings and two suites made up of 10 horizontal images each. These works, all 2001, were painted with acrylic on the kind of birch plywood used to make model airplanes. Parks selects a single color of paint for each panel, covering it with a transparent film on which he traces a photograph of a place that has meaning to him. Next, he cuts from the film areas of the composition he wishes to highlight. He paints onto the panel through these openings, thereby creating sharply demarcated forms. He may repeat this step one or more times, often using different colors. The result is a layered painting hovering between abstraction and figuration, and displaying varying degrees of depth. The colors are applied flatly, except for the top coat(s), where surface texture is obtained using a roller. All feeling is excised from these precisely executed images.

From the battery 01 (16 by 16 inches) depicts a cropped image of two leafless trees as seen from the ground, silhouetted against a blank sky. The dark brown branches were painted first, and the white wedges of atmosphere were added with a roller following extremely intricate work with an X-acto blade. The amount of editing performed by Parks is more apparent in messe (12 by 12 inches). Thin vertical and diagonal light blue lines hover between planes of dark blue to suggest an interior space, but he masks any more telling detail from this bi-chrome composition.

Track 01 is a composite, 360-degree panoramic view of the trees and structures surrounding a racetrack. This comprehensive image has been divided among 10 panels (11 by 16 1/2 inches each) displayed sequentially, with small intervals separating them. Here, the picture is built up of layers of white, black, mocha and light gray--the last two colors applied with a roller.

Parks's deadpan images of architectural interiors and exteriors, racetracks and trees are devoid of human life. His banal subject matter elicits little interest. What is most striking is the artist's cold, exacting technique, which seeks to eradicate the hand of the painter. These pictures have the anonymous character of sleek design and are perfectly attuned to our day and age.