Barbara Garber: Free Fall
Reflecting an expanded conception of drawing, Barbara Garber’s work plays on the boundary between two-dimensional and three-dimensional representation, while also exploring the temporal nature of seeing and experiencing art in a specific place.
Garber uses large sheets of translucent drafting film to create the building blocks for her installations. With acrylic paint and colored pencil, she stencils, draws, paints, and stipples abstract patterns in various colors and color combinations onto the sheets. She then cuts strips or shapes from the sheets and reassembles the pieces to curve out from, insert into, or layer over other sections of the film.
While viewing the installation, look for variations of pattern, color, and shape, zones of positive and negative space, how individual pieces relate to each other, and how they connect the walls of the gallery. All contribute to experiencing the rhythm and dynamics of Garber’s work while moving through time and space.
— Mara Williams, Chief Curator
BMAC’s South Gallery is a small, confined space with walls of different sizes that seem to fold around each other. The gallery’s intimate scale allowed me to work with the space as a whole, challenging me to create an installation with colors, shapes, and patterns that relate the walls to each other.
The work has been complicated and intense. My studio is a simple rectangle with high ceilings; the South Gallery has low ceilings with thirteen walls at different angles. It looked different to me every time I returned, so I decided to work from a place of not knowing. I would trust my process, work on many fronts at once, use various sizes of drawing film sheets, and stay focused. Perhaps the political climate swirling around us left me no choice; it certainly gave me the title for the piece.
I’ve tried to keep my ideas as flexible as possible. Shapes and patterns now migrate from one piece to another. This allows the viewer to move back and forth, to experience both the individual drawings and the piece as a whole.
— Barbara Garber
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June 23, Friday, 5:30 p.m. – Opening of Six New Exhibits
