White Robe

Description

Like many contemporary painters, Sean Scully complicates and enlivens the geometry of the grid, which is the fundamental matrix upon which Minimalist philosophy and aesthetic is built upon. Scully’s signature stripes act as endlessly adaptable, neutral building blocks that can be combined in various states of precarious balance—verticals confront horizontals; darks wrestle lights. The thickened surfaces of works such as White Robe are countered by Scully’s geometric composition: “One of my objectives is to make the paintings ‘classical’ in one way—they do use a stable structure—but schizophrenic in another way, in the violence of the abutments.”