Gravity's Rainbow (Large [enough to enter])

[ckaratnytsky]

     Today, through NYPL's interoffice mail, I got a present from an 
     unknown sender.  It's a brochure from the Whitney Museum's exhibit of 
     Fred Tomaselli's "Gravity's Rainbow," on display until 7 January.  
     
     Thanks, Secret Santa.  Merry Christmas to you, too,
     
     whatever seas you cross, 

     Chris

     P.S.  A-and the water wings feel GRRRRRREAT!
     
     Here's how it starts:
     
     Gravity's Rainbow (Large) (1999) offers intense visual pleasure.  
     Brilliantly colored arcs of varying lengths swoop and crisscross 
     gracefully against a black ground, creating arabesques that loop 
     rhythmically across the five panels of the piece.  The visual density 
     and complexity of Fred Tomaselli's piece parallels Thomas Pynchon's 
     1973 novel Gravity's Rainbow, whose title Tomaselli adopted.  The arcs 
     in Gravity's Rainbow (Large) resemble festive garlands, or 
     extraordinarily large strands of a beaded necklace.  Closer inspection 
     reveals that the arcs are composed of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of 
     individual elements, painstakingly pieced together from unusual 
     sources: pills, leaves from hemp and jimson weed plants; foxglove 
     petals; photographic images of butterflies, flowers, birds, and 
     insects; magazine cutouts of body parts such as  lips, hands, eyes, and 
     feet; and painted tromp l'oeil objects.  each of these units is affixed 
     to the panels and encased in layers of hard, glossy resin.
     
     Gravity's Rainbow (Large) is essentially an elaborate collage, 
     seamlessly blending real, photographically reproduced, and painted 
     objects drawn from the disparate realms of nature and commerce.  Its 
     dazzling array of shapes and colors suggests the term "eye candy."  
     The abundance of pharmaceutical capsules and tablets used to construct 
     the arcs, however, gives the work an aura of toxicity.  though all the 
     pills are encased in tamperproof resin, we are reminded that 
     Tomaselli's concept of beauty has a potentially dark, poisonous 
     underside.
     
     While Gravity's Rainbow (Large) employs materials and techniques 
     Tomaselli has been using for nearly a decade, it is his largest and 
     most ambitious work to date.  Six months in the making, its size is 
     comparable to the largest of Abstract Expressionist canvases.  Like a 
     classic 1950s drip painting by Jackson Pollock, the scale of Gravity's 
     Rainbow (Large) awes and overwhelms us.  It is large enough to enter.  
     if laid flat, as it was during construction, it becomes an arena in 
     which action (of an obsessive sort) takes place.
     
     
     [I love the exhausted sound of "six months in the making."  It's good 
     to laugh.]