Alfred Jensen created works of art whose conception was subject to extra-aesthetic imperatives, even to the point of forcing “un-aesthetic” decisions.  This show exhibits essentially abstract works by a range of artists whose visual power is likewise catalyzed by the incursion or absorption of factors beyond the picture plane.

The center of energy in Jensen’s paintings and drawings sits on a boundary between abstract form and an array of idea structures. His intensely visual production isn’t representational in any conventional way, yet seems forcefully shaped by realities outside the strict visual concerns of painting or drawing (concerns like philosophy, numbering systems, mathematical and scientific ideas).

For other artists in this show such areas include statistical data, language and text, mapped social or political matrices, or a pointedly tactile reality that contests composed visual relations.  This artwork can embody an abstraction that seems formed, or even excitingly deformed and pushed into unexpected shapes, by collision with the “extra-aesthetic”.  In viewing such work, we feel the tension of our desire to pull what we see into an aesthetic framework, to recuperate what might seem like surprising choices and unusual structures back into a pictorial focus, to reconcile their obvious (if inscrutable) logic with the more familiar logic we expect to order the parts of a picture.

Ideas invested in art in this strange way can seem to present an invitation to solve a puzzle, to grasp superimposed patterns, or to finally resolve odd symmetries.  Yet, this process of thoughtful looking more likely leads not to an answer, but to a space.  Not to a something, but rather to a more valuable nothing.

Artists in the Exhibition:
Melissa Brown
Ingrid Calame
Linda Francis
Xylor Jane
Alfred Jensen
Paul Laffoley
Mark Lombardi
Dan Miller
John O’Connor
Roman Opalka
George Ortman
Bruce Pearson
Tim Smith
Jorinde Voigt
Ken Weathersby
George Widener