Naomi Linzen:  Regimented Disorder

 

What is seen at first glance is a riot of colors and materials that cover the surface of the paintings. A symphony of colors, configurations, and emotions that unfolds on the canvases and challenges the viewer. These are featured in a wide and rich panoply of works, representing the creative output of the artist Naomi Linzen over the last decade.

The exhibition consists of four main series, which differ from each other in their emotional theme and distinctive color scheme. Each series boasts a great richness of color, with many hues and sub-hues which are combined in unexpected and complex ways. The development of these series highlights the evolution of Linzen as an artist exploring her personal identity. Overall, her work represents an in-depth journey of introspection. Her personal language stands out in its originality and independent, unique voice, embodying beauty and precision that is born of a meticulous and calculated process.

Linzen works in acrylic paint on canvas combined with mixed media. Her multi-layered paintings at once reveal and conceal, and are richly textured. Her works lie on the cusp between two-dimensional paintings and three-dimensional reliefs. A noteworthy recurring element in her paintings is the use of objects that she randomly gathers from her immediate surroundings – such as alfalfa, gravel, sand, and pebbles – combined with items such as broken glass and rusty objects, as well as scrap materials from her studio, such as peels of acrylic paint, or epoxy leftovers.

Linzen’s selection of objects and materials is intuitive. To begin with, she prefers to use each object as it is, in its natural state as found, without changing its appearance. Usually the creative process is not predetermined, but impulsive and spontaneous. The artist places the materials randomly on the canvas, and then combines the various elements by covering them with pastes and paints, until the objects and materials are merged into an accretion of fragments that form a single entity. The dominant feature common to these materials is anonymity.  Once the raw materials are combined and painted, they are difficult to identify. When a new identity is forged, Linzen begins the process of reorganization and reconstruction, until the work reaches a point of equilibrium.

As a result of the process, a free occurrence – a kind of regimented disorder – is formed. In this way, Linzen’s work oscillates between extremes: balanced and chaotic, orderly and disorganized, mobile and static, resulting in a canvas that is unrestricted yet precise, striving to attain a certain personal truth.  The subject painted is mostly undefined and explores the boundary between the identifiable and the abstract, between reality and fiction, in a manner that leaves the viewer free to search for meaning.

Linzen has a sophisticated knack of translating experiences into color, shape, and material. Her passion for expressing the variety of possibilities of color and material is evident in her method of working that is at once spontaneous and considered, and in a variety of mutual interactions between colors and materials. Her craft features a constant tension between revelation and concealment, between the tangible and familiar, and the hidden and surprising.

Many things remain unresolved in terms of subject matter and understanding of the work as a whole. Consequently, the artist notes, the viewer has an important role in tackling the significance of her works. The landscape, for example, is always imaginary, and often nothing more than a horizon can be made out. Sometimes, the viewer is unable even to perceive the amorphous landscape she has imagined, and must become actively engaged in observation. As Martin Buber once observed, “A work of art longs to be completed in the observer’s mind,” and the encounter between the work of art and the observer “is not a passive encounter, but an active one, in which the observer undertakes to complete the work’s interrupted phrase, to answer its question, to heed, and to present oneself in a state of dialogue.”[1]

This statement seems to be an apt description of the dialogical and active stance required of the viewer in front of Linzen’s works. The large expanses of the works draw the viewer’s gaze inward, inviting one to become immersed within and to feel them. What links together all the series featured in the exhibition is the deceptive aspect, as things are not always what they first appear to be. Linzen evokes in viewers a sense of doubt, because what is apparent and visible is not always as it seems. As the philosopher Martin Heidegger claims in The Origin of the Work of Art, works of art are not merely representations of the way things are, but tell us something more.

 

Accuracy and Distillation: The Wreath Series / The White Series, 2010–2012

 

This series represents the artist’s focus on the materials, and her desire to create without use of color. The works are very tactile, and the chosen materials are the key factor in the painting. The series consists of comparatively quiet works that harbor an internal turmoil (expressed, as we shall see below, in other series on display at the exhibition). Linzen’s own description reflects the spirit of this series:

In my works, I examine the balance between the parts that define me – impulsivity and organization, beauty and ugliness. For me, the works express a veiling of truth and the tension between my internal and external self. I am crying out silently about the gulf between my external appearance and the inner mental experience. It is an experience of mental complexity that is constructed from the need to compromise in order to fit in, in the face of the desire not to compromise and to deliver the naked truth, and the understanding that I am able to express internal chaos only when it is coated and processed.

 

Linzen notes that she was drawn to wreaths because they are timeless in their symbolic cultural significance, and mainly because their meaning is subject to the viewer’s interpretation. The wreaths are made of various materials that the artist has collected and pasted – in some cases, on a ground of paper pulp or acrylic paint. The work process ranges from a random to precise use of materials, to create a defined image of known aesthetic significance. The series of wreaths recalls the frescoes of ancient Greek and Roman art. A laurel wreath has been a symbol of victory and glory from ancient times to the present day.[2] Contemporary viewers can interpret the image that appears before them as a representation of memory, of mourning, or of victory, happiness, or future hope. In the disassembled wreath one might perhaps see a hint –or an intermediate stage – of the impending emotional outburst in the Red-Black Lava series.

 

Emotional Outburst: The Red-Black Lava Series, 2011–2013

 

The shift from the White series to the Red series symbolizes the breaking of boundaries, giving free rein to emotions and to a need to relinquish the ego and expose the id. The changes in style of painting reflect the transition from dealing with texture and color to the expression of inner processes and rebel against conventions.

The Lava series is akin to an erupting volcano: the palette is vibrant, fearless, and comprises vivid, engulfing, and bright hues of red. The presence of balanced foci of color – both light and dark – in the paintings prevent the viewer from being overwhelmed and provides focal points to fall back on. The impression one gets is of containable chaos. The works radiate power, strength, and blunt frankness.

The color range in this series is intense. The works are dramatic, turbulent, and surprising in their vibrancy. Linzen believes in the power of color, and its ability to convey the intensity of the moment. The colors on the warm red spectrum blend together in a profusion of intermediate hues that convey a stormy atmosphere. The lava is formed in constant flux before our eyes, eluding complete capture on the canvas. The paintings are full of erupting energy, emotions, and passions that are reflected in the powerful color that covers the various materials visible beneath it. The works evoke a sense of powerful, massive movement that is on the brink of a critical moment – the moment of eruption.

The color red has a dual symbolism, as it symbolizes both life and death. In this series, Linzen reveals her great passion for painting, manifested in a red color that is full of vitality and takes over almost the entire format.

 

Dealing with the Unfamiliar: A Series of Colorful Canvases, 2014–2016

 

In this series, the chaotic creative process has undergone a course of stabilization, as evident in its controlled use of colors, with a view to equilibrium and precision. From the comfort and peace of a monochromatic palette, and the tumultuous palette in shades of red, Linzen has moved on in this series to confront herself and grapple with colors that she is uneasy with. Here, she has chosen to challenge her own work, by using saccharine-sweet colors, in an effort to avoid the familiar and comfortable and to tackle with colors that have so far have not been part of her world.

At first glance, the paintings in this series look abstract, flowing, and essentially free. Like Linzen’s other paintings, these paintings began spontaneously, and then through time crystallized into a balanced and precise structure of complementary areas of color, in a process that gradually developed into a creation of a single, cohesive whole.

Linzen says that for her, the beauty that is revealed to the viewer is a kind of deception, with a hidden layer and a disclosed one:

It’s a cover story: if you regard the White series as ego, and the Red series as id, this series might be perceived as super ego. What is visible outwardly is what we would like others to think of us. But for me, this series conceals my inner truth.

 

Breaking the Boundaries: The Black and Gold Series, 2018–2021

 

The transition between the color series and the present one is one of relinquishing color and returning to the artist’s beloved dark and black tones – where she feels safe. Forgoing color allows her to engage, once again, with the material.

The works in this series are of imposing size, and require a process of attentive observation. They represent the final step in the transition from precise work to raw abstraction: coarser in its materiality, and more meticulous in terms of color and composition. Here, the paintings which include many elements, become freer and wilder. There is something more chaotic, unprocessed, about them. They contain rougher, and more, patches of primal color. In this series, Linzen breathes new life into each painting, and the compositions appear to be in constant flux and to contain flickering lights. Within a dark, black surface are inlaid golden bright patches that resemble a broad cosmos full of twinkling stars, which may represent the expanses of the universe.

The works symbolize a breach of the artist’s own boundaries, in a conscious effort to attain a more profound self-understanding. This expresses the process of maturation she has undergone in the past decade, and her relinquishing of the pursuit of accuracy and control of materiality. This stage highlights a choice not to delve into the nuts and bolts of each and every detail, but to give rein to a wilder and freer expression – even if it is still calculated to some extent.

For Linzen, this breach of boundaries is as essential as air to breathe. As to whether she would like to attain still further levels of freedom in future, she answers that the next stage of evolution of her works will be the use of a limited palette. As she puts it, monochrome works will force her to be more precise, in terms of the quantity and placement of the material, in her effort to create the required intensity of expression.

For Linzen, the works of the German artist Anselm Kiefer are an inspiration in terms of their size, range of materials, colors, content, composition, and the message they convey. Like Linzen, Kiefer uses materials in an unusual and innovative way. He experiments with various materials – such as dust, ash, clay, sand, lead, rubble, terracotta, flowers, seeds, brambles, straw, glass, fabrics, and more – in an enigmatic and ambiguous fashion, and sees physical materiality as a starting point for the meaning of a work.[3]

Linzen feels an affinity for Kiefer’s works and the experience they evoke thanks to their precise compositions, materiality, amount of color, method of applying paint, and sense of movement. Together, these elements represent a repressed storm similar to the hallmarks of the balanced chaos of her work. To contain the chaos, Kiefer creates vanishing points in his works. Linzen, on the other hand, produces balance by using three color foci that create anchors, like grappling hooks. Although her works are not symmetrical, they nonetheless bear the marks of balance.

Like Linzen’s paintings, Kiefer’s works also seek not to present reality, but to express transformation. They offer ambiguous allegories and metaphors that are open to the viewer’s interpretation, in line with his or her knowledge and life experiences. His work is in constant motion, and out of the darkness of the works an inner light beams, that signals to viewers both an aesthetic and an emotional journey, and allows them to conjure a world out of nothing.[4]

Linzen notes that her latest work created for the current exhibition, Gilded Wreath, marks the opening of a new series. It is actually a painting without a canvas – a wreath made of leftovers of food from her kitchen, covered in gold. The result looks like a valuable piece of jewelry, but in fact this seemingly spectacular piece harbors foodstuffs that are inedible and discarded refuse. These unconventional raw materials include leftover roasted peppers, sprigs of thyme, cherry seeds, and so forth. Like her paintings that contain raw materials, the gilt object is a misleading deception, whereby refuse becomes a kind of latticework of a rich material texture. In this latest work, Linzen explores the boundaries between sculpture and painting, and between abstract and identifiable, and by disassembling what is there strives to attain a redefinition and a new symbolic meaning.