Marian Carow: Permit Pending

About this exhibition

Within the past several years, I have been making wall-mounted mixed media objects out of everyday materials. With a process-driven, improvisational approach, I allow chance and contingency into the work. A major project has been investigation of the possibilities of salvaged corrugated cartons. I also employ wood elements, both purchased and found, cast-off scraps, repositories of my own and others' decision making. By bringing materials into my studio, I can live with and consider them over time. I begin without a preconceived end in mind and proceed in a spontaneous way, bending, cutting, sawing, ripping, stomping, reconfiguring, gluing, until a form resonates. Surface treatments often include white house paint, scantily applied to suggest weathering and allowing exposure of structural seams. Inspiration for these pieces resides in the pulse of urban surroundings--architecture, construction and the accompanying debris, abandoned structures, fragmentation as well as the anxiety of instability and fragility of life. For a large part of my career, drawing has been the primary focus of my practice. Strongly influenced by minimalism, I employ varieties of wet and dry media to develop series of works on paper, the content addressing tensions among flat shapes and lines, the energy between them, their relationship to negative space as well as to the edges of the support. My approach is to begin with an element, adding information to develop a visual dialogue, mindful of restraint, challenging myself to know when to stop. The final images are distillations of experiential incongruities, with a prominent role given to negative space, referencing the weight of silence, of things unsaid. Pivot, 2022. Plywood, Acrylic, 10" x 6.5" x 2.5"

via Chicago Gallery News