MIKE PARR at ANNA SCHWARTZ GALLERY

Yesterday in the main gallery at Anna Schwartz the walls were graced with large-scale, gestural paintings. Black paint on white walls. Monolithic The aftermath of a performance by Mike Parr, revealed in the video projected onto the back wall. The artist carefully climbs an A-frame ladder. His eyes are closed as he dips the brush and paints on the surface using wide, long stokes. His arm cocked and stretched as he covers a section of wall in front of him. The performance is precarious. He is painting whilst being essentially blind to the surface on which he paints. The viewer understands that the darkness within his closed eyes is demonstrated by externalizing the blackness that forms a direct contrast to the whiteness of the wall. A binary, black, white. I wondered briefly if this was a commentary on race or something else. Perhaps a attempt to draw them together in harmony. A spiritual endeavor. Something too about the mind’s eye - what we see or imagine within our psyche. It was a visceral experience for me as the movement of the camera and the ensuing movement of his performance created a kind of vertigo that I imagined the artist too must have been experiencing in his temporary blindness on that potentially unstable ladder. He could fall. But didn’t. In the end I projected my own idea of the whole installation. It was for me a commentary on the void created by the pandemic. A blackness that cannot be articulated. Personal, universal. I’d been working on two black drawings myself in the past few days. There is definitely something in the air