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| White Painting #606, 1987, formica on birch plywood with 23 carat gold |
Through Abstraction and the emergence of Conceptual Art, painting, in exploring the medium of painting itself, became reduced to its simplest form - the blank canvas. Here Christian Eckart takes this deconstruction a step further still, questioning the confines of the canvas and its frame, presenting a gold frame as the dominant subject - an art object in itself. The frame even becomes its own composition, shifted against the wall, breaking the confines of the painting.
The painted surface remains neutral, overly glossed. The gold frame becomes malleable, rising and falling, disrupting the integrity of the rectangle traditionally containing the artwork.
This frame - not merely a frame, but rather the very concept of a frame, standing-in for all others - becomes a metaphor for the ability of art to reach beyond its confines, to touch the viewer. If they will let it.
On exhibition in the show Color and Form at the Broad Contemporary Art Museum at LACMA, Los Angeles.
