COMBINE 2012: Annual Undergraduate Student Exhibition

In a monumental synthesis of process-based painting and minimalist sculpture, Nicole Levaque’s Bowed Stoned confronts its viewer with an optical conundrum. Consisting of three 8’ x 4’ plastered and varnished Masonite panels, the work at once towers over and slips beneath the viewer. Following in the tradition of process-based abstraction, the artist’s gesture dominates the polished surface of the panels. Emphasized is the extreme physicality of creation and it is in this guise that Bowed Stoned first presents itself to the audience. The operating principle of the work, however, is misapprehension, and it is here that Levaque distinguishes herself and her work. The optical illusions that characterize Bowed Stone articulate the formal and conceptual tensions active in the work while at the same time complicating its reception. As an art object, Bowed Stoned reveals itself in two distinct aspects: the gestural façade that greets the passing observer and the experiment in perception that rewards an engaged viewer.

Levaque initiates this exercise in illusion with the perceptual experience of weight. Viewed frontally, Bowed Stoned seems to slide off the gallery wall under the pressure of its own mass. The object’s bulk is accentuated the thick layering of plaster, which seems to pull the panels down from their nails. Viewed from the side, however the viewer is confronted by the improbable thinness of these enormous panels. The sheet-like thinness of the Masonite board introduces an element of play into the artwork, encouraging the viewer to take aesthetic pleasure in the juxtaposition of the object’s weighty façade and paper-thin flanks.

This playfulness, however, is not without a touch of irony. Harnessing the element of misapprehension to complicate the boundary between high and low art, Bowed Stoned comments on the history of abstraction while retaining its aesthetic. The immense scale of the work is at odds with the media selected for its execution. Nonetheless, Levaque’s highly polished treatment of the media disguise their modest character from the casual glance. Extracting her palette from the natural hues of the Masonite board, Levaque bequeaths her humble medium with the intense luminosity of oil and copper. It is only under sustained observation that the plaster and Masonite can be picked out from the object’s heavily varnished surface. Here too the viewer is called upon to move forward and examine the work at close range. The physical participation of the viewer mirrors the physical gesture of the artist, transforming the act of looking into a dynamic process of exchange between object and spectator.

By bisecting the artwork into two distinct facets, one of which is accessible to the passer-by and another accessible only to the invested viewer, the optical illusions of Bowed Stoned not only demand physical exploration to match the physical process of creation, but turn the very act of spectatorship into a performance, the staging of which is an integral component of the artwork as a whole. Although remaining firmly within the tradition of process art, in Bowed Stoned pushes the boundaries of this tradition, extending the focus of process-based abstraction to include the very process of looking.