On loan to The Met The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Kern
Joan Waltemath American
Not on view
Kern is characteristic of the artist’s interest in using mathematical calculations and the grid to compose works and her creation of paints incorporating unconventional media. The artist uses a matrix or grid to plot out painting compositions on paper ahead of committing them to paint. Two-thirds of this work’s surface is a forest green, with the remaining third being black. A rectangle of fluorescent orange appears to divide the two. The addition of the rectangle introduces the illusion of depth onto a two-dimensional surface: re-mapping the relationship of the two dominant colors into a third dimension. As such, one color recedes while the other comes to the fore, creating a figure and ground dynamic. At the same time, the identification of one color with the "figure" and the other with the "ground" remains unfixed and can switch back and forth with sustained looking. This meditative style of looking is both enforced and cultivated by the work.
