The Half That Ties, The Half That Breaks
Deconstructing painting has been done to death, but even so it failed to die for so long that wondering if it will die died first. Deconstruction and reimagining of painting is what Julia Bland is doing in The Half That Ties the Half That Breaks at Andrew Rafatz. It is ambitious, experimental, and grounded in a commitment to ultimately achieve the essential and elusive sense of... something.... that painting always searches for. At the same time, it is always so inspiring to see that there is so much left to discover.
Bland’s paintings feel very familiar to me, and I eventually concluded that this is because they remind me so much of the drawings of Adolf Wolfli. She does not cite Wolfli as an influence, or even as an artist she's very familiar with. That aesthetic comparison, however incidental, may have to do with a deeper conceptual relationship, which there is insight in exploring.
Wolfli’s visions shine through the deep history of laborious and fastidious mark making on their surfaces. He made no compromises, always doing the work to articulate every detail with conviction as though it was a moral obligation. Even when it will be lost in the noise of complex composition, he pressed hard on every mark in every inch of the surface. It's a righteous diligence about the work that is not done for the viewer, but the laborious process itself is demonstrative of higher priorities - aspiring to be true to a vision which related to something transcendent. Similarly, Bland’s works draw me in close, as paintings do, to their surface. I feel compelled to examine them closely, where paint meets surface, and in that place that same quality of principled labor is present. Paint is clinging to threads. It is forced into the crevices of rough fabric that is textured, twisted, tied or hanging. In Bland's case - this extends into the creation of the surfaces themselves, where weaving, tying, stitching and sewing are done with a thoroughness that reaches beyond aesthetic effect to a concern for the underlying truth of the object,which is as much or more a process concept as a visual one
Symmetry and patterns are another dynamic, which Wolfli and Bland have in common, but it is also a point at which they diverge in interesting ways. These geometric mechanisms are here, as it often has been historically in all sorts of religious works, a means to create context that can hold that sort of belief or trust in a spiritual vision, or an idea. Whereas Wolfli utilizes these in that traditional sense, Bland seems to take a more intentional approach to explore them. Seen In her small sketches especially; she is looking for ideas which possess impartial detachment of minimalism with compositions that combine just two or three geometric ideas, but simultaneously maintaining a quite personal and distinctive aesthetic voice which populates and fleshes out that compositional idea with conviction, not inhibition.
In her own words, Bland tends to describe these as textile works rather than painting - discussing a diverse range of influences, such as Moroccan textile tradition - and tending to delve into discussing that sense of something spirtuaital from which the concept comes and to which it aspires to stay true. In the gallery PR she is quoted:
‘Our notions of time, justice, fate, and the eternal are all bound in the language and metaphors of weaving, and it is almost impossible to talk about our relationships with each other and to our community without invoking its complex materiality. We are tied together, truth unravels, lives intertwine, we follow a thread, cut it out, etc.’
