Orly Maiberg / Out of the Blue

Opening: 31/10/2019   Closing: 28/12/2019

Out of the Blue, Installation view, Noga Gallery, 2019
Out of the Blue, Installation view, Noga Gallery, 2019
Out of the Blue, Installation view, Noga Gallery, 2019
Out of the Blue, Installation view, Noga Gallery, 2019
Out of the Blue, Installation view, Noga Gallery, 2019
Out of the Blue, Installation view, Noga Gallery, 2019
Out of the Blue, Installation view, Noga Gallery, 2019
Abstract Sea, 2019, ink & collage on raw canvas, 173x97cm
Throw Net, 2019, ink & collage on raw canvas, 175x191cm
Pink Mountain Tops, 2019, ink & collage on raw canvas, 182x172cm
Spring Fever, 2019, ink & collage on raw canvas, 184x219cm
Delicate Balance, 2019, ink & collage on raw canvas,164x176cm
Mountain Triptych, 2019, ink & collage on raw canvas, 179x290cm
Net Throwing, 2019, ink & collage on raw canvas, 42x33cm

At first, the paintings seem abstract – wide shots of diffuse, saturated, or dilutedstains –like an aerial view, satellite images, or perhaps a map that offers an abstract representation of the terrain. At second glance, the abstract space comes into focus and becomes clearer. The eye skips from site to site and starts recognizing figurative images: snowy ridges, steep slopes, serpentine creeks, or possibly tangles of thin capillaries and open cuts of bleeding paint. A more careful look reveals small figures and other concrete images scattered in the torn landscape –figures in action, events that offer a foothold of sorts.

The work process is completely bare and exposed. Washing, squeezing, cutting, pasting, brushwork, drawing. But despite its unplanned nature, it also seems considerably controlled. Further treatment instills meaning in the accidental. Random stains, cracks in the paint, a faded wash – all these serve as the starting point for deliberate interventions. Pieces of canvas cut from one painting are pasted onto another, but also reworked and integrated into the space, elevating it like a topographic map. From a different perspective, these supposed ridges, these strips of canvas, these patches look like bandages meant to heal the wounded, bleeding surface; to mend the blemishes inflicted on the landscape. And in-between there are pauses. Empty, quiet, seemingly “undone” areas, territories formed by their own concealment.

Wandering past the works may generate a sense of disorientation, in the absence of anchoring elements to hold on to. One’s ability to be in uncertainties, mystery, and doubts is a “negative capability,” wrote the Romantic English poet John Keats in one of his most quoted letters. How can a negative be considered a capacity? Keats understood that any good artwork feeds on these “adverse” ingredients. Where there is no silence there is no sound.