SITE131 | Exploring Constructs

Though Harriet Korman's practice has continually transformed over the course of her 50-year career, the critical reception of her work has remained consistent throughout. Roberta Smith's review in The New York Times of her recent show is the latest in a series of critical engagements dating back to the '70s. Smith writes:

"Harriet Korman’s paintings have been good for a while. Now they’re getting better. In New Work, she continues her longtime practice of destabilizing geometry, making it a living, breathing, uneasy thing through asymmetry, personal touch and an unyielding palette. important is her virtual banishment of white — which is so closely tied to geometric abstraction’s supposed purity, from Malevich and Mondrian forward.

For most of the 2000s, Korman specialized in paintings that were seemingly fractured into varying triangles, interrupted by occasional curves and ovals. Around 2016, she went symmetrical, most impressively with a series of cruciform compositions defined by right-angled bands of slightly jarring colors radiating into the paintings’ corners. They seemed to almost stretch before your eyes.

Now Korman has turned to concentric rectangles. These also radiate toward the edges, but concentricity bestows all sorts of associations ~ with picture frames, television logos, and especially irreverent riffs on Josef Albers’s “Homage to the Square” paintings. In contrast to the master’s carefully calibrated proportions and colors, Korman’s homages to rectangles jump in and out, thanks to abrupt changes of width and color. Their frequent caramels and khakis flirt with tastelessness while bonding with adjacent blues, reds, greens and yellows, usually not very pure. Korman’s refusal of rulers also adds vitality. Made strictly by hand, the bands of color wobble and occasionally curve emphatically. These are delightful, elucidating paintings, with their own off-center ideas about beauty. Most of all, they are alive."

Roberta Smith, “Harriet Korman,” The New York Times, April 2022

Korman’s paintings are very simple. What’s amazing about them is not that she does so much with so little but that she does much with so little with such nonchalance. And the nonchalance isn’t a negative quality because the results aren’t sloppy or insubstantial.”

Roberta Smith, “Harriet Korman,” Artforum, September 1975

The gangly, 6 foot 8” tall, self-taught Ronald Llewelyn Jones is a multidisciplinary artist, known for his site-specific sculptures that move art from the present and the past to the future. Jones’ randomly selected hues naturally react to Harriet Korman’s colors and imagery. His conical constructions seem to be musical responses to Korman’s high-toned geometric rectangles.

The works he usually installs “guerrilla” style in outdoor locations also appear in galleries and museums. Using long strands of string secured to the ceiling, walls and floors, Jones challenges the viewer to navigate areas of inaccessibility and consider how societal constructs can quite literally impede freedom of movement and communication, across class, ethnicity, and gender.

Last year at the Galveston Arts Center, Jones created Wave (Goodbye), a site-specific sculptural installation. The highly political artwork represented a large tidal wave with its wake engulfing visitors. The work added physical context to the magnitude of repercussions regarding inaction and indifference in matters of human rights and equality, ecology, and industry.

Black [Between the Lines], an exhibition of sculptural pieces, emphasized the framework of institutional spaces and the social implications of the lived experience in these structures. The works illustrated the systemic constructs that have moved through time, further polarizing and hindering lasting progress for the African-American community. Often unseen is a broader system of oppression and omission that effectively marginalizes African-Americans in institutions throughout the United States.

Three public works commissioned by Houston Museum of African American Culture will appear later this year. In a four-day incubator at Rice in Houston, Jones will pursue his interest in water. The self-schooled artist has much to pursue, claiming there are many stories yet to be told!
Black Americans’ Struggles ~ and Success, Houston City Book, Chris Becker, February 2022
Black [Between the Lines], Hooks-Epstein Galleries, Houston, March 2022

Joan Davidow, curator|director

EXPLORING CONSTRUCTS: “Most of all, they are alive!”