Year: 2019
Medium: oil, egg tempera on paper, mounted on aluminum
Dimensions: 28 x 20 cm (3 1/8 x 7 7/8 in.)
Acquired from 104GALERIE, 2022
A fine wave pattern painted with egg tempera serves as a base for the work. The dark brown waves over a white ground seem to have been painted with a spatula or squeegee. This creates not only a chromatic layering but also a sense of continuous, undulating spatiality. But then a bold and austere grid is superimposed over the top, as if to completely negate those waves. This grid was drawn by scratching paint from the top layer of the work, perhaps also with something like a needle or painting knife. Methods leaving evidence of paint having been scratched away from or drawn across the surface are a real signature of Fox’s work. The artist deliberately emphasizes these effects by adopting approaches such as mounting the substrate on aluminum, as with this piece, or using glass—the harder the surface, the more these characteristics stand out. The palette of the painting is dominated by the thick blue painted in (presumably) oil on the final layer of the work. The energy and movement created by the thick blue paint, which appears to have been forcefully smeared on, contrasts with the composed tranquility of the layer underneath, giving rise to an antagonism between these contending elements on the paper. The coldness of the blue has the effect of suppressing the emotion somewhat, however, and prevents a compositional collapse. Despite its modest scale, this work exemplifies many of the characteristics of Fox’s work extraordinarily well.
