David Kaiser
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In Network#101501, a latticework of thick white paint on white canvas is covered with many tiny, intricate black and pink shapes resembling flowers or fireworks explosions. Refined enough to suggest that each line was painted individually, these mix symmetry and delicacy to achieve a fragile beauty. The areas of canvas not covered by white paint–which look like the holes in Swiss cheese–contain small, offhand pencil marks. Finally, glass beads so small they’re barely visible are scattered throughout, refracting light and glowing in a way that apparently comments on different ways of seeing. The seemingly random pencil marks make one wonder whether the flower shapes are as precisely executed as they appear.
In fact these shapes were made by dropping black or pink paint onto the white paint while it was still wet; the drops dispersed to create the patterns. (Kaiser tested different paints to choose the look he wanted.) The pencil marks, applied even before the white paint was poured on in its own carefully controlled way, appear to be the least calculated element but are actually the most conventionally made.