R. H. Quaytman

“T,(Broodthaers and Buren) Chapter 24

In her work, Rebecca Quaytman displays great interest in the dissolution of the image.

Expressing the progressive disappearance of representation takes various forms. The artist attempts to freeze different temporal strata on one same ground in order to blur visual perception.

Her works are always the result of research that creates links with the historical context of the exhibition space, and take place within her larger body of already existing work which is grouped in chapters.

Quaytman’s investigations in the archives, photographic ones in particular, of the institutions who invite her, are generally the source of the images which are then used in her paintings.

Screen-printed onto wooden panels, in dimensions that respect the golden rule, covered in gesso, reframed, enlarged, sometimes sprinkled with diamond dust, they have something ancient about them. The near pointillist weft recalls the printing techniques of the 1960s and the large pixels in Kara Walker or Wade Guyton’s work.

Though everything is perfectly controlled, our eye hesitates. The archival time spans, the screen-printing, how the work takes its form, the materialization of the object (framing devices) are all superimposed during the ephemeral exhibition, and its aftermath.