Joanne Greenbaum’s painting process lends itself perfectly to the monotype medium. She creates work by a continual accretion of odd-ball shapes and architectonic forms that congregate or overlap as if seeking their own nest-like niches within a composition. Unexpected negative space tweaks her compositions into a quirky orbit that is somehow just right and aesthetically satisfying.
Sometimes Greenbaum’s bold color choices battle and abrade as she sets down graphic forms, uses fluorescent hues or a singular, unexpected color tone as a surface field on which lozenge-like forms link and gravitate. At other times, the artist limits her palette to a single color emphasizing bold, graphic components: the punctured disks, the cellular groupings, the boxy lattice work. These forms anchor each work as the eye fishtails around seeking some sort of visual equilibrium. The outcome is that Greenbaum has succeeded in creating compositions that harness a spunky vocabulary that both seduces and convinces, that drags a viewer into the complexities of both process and private vision.
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
Brandeis Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA; CCA Andratx, Majorca, ES; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Haus Konstruktiv Museum, Zurich, CH; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; Museum Abteiberg, Monchengladbach, Germany; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; and the Ross Art Collection at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
