Edward Cella Art & Architecture is pleased to present an ambitious and focused solo project by Ruth Pastine for EXPO Chicago 2018. The exhibition features exploratory geometric color field abstractions in oil on canvas and pastel on paper. The new works reveal a progression of Pastine’s ongoing investigation into furthering the limits of experience through fluctuating boundaries, relationships, the structure of color, and light and space.
These paintings are made by engaging complementary hues and opposing values within a self-limited color system. Now defined by distinct frameworks of banding, Pastine’s new color field paintings transcend and offset the picture plane. Pastine creates paintings through a highly refined process of building layer upon layer. Through sets of select color combinations, she reveals the essential tensions that drive her work: surface and depth, light and matter, materiality and immateriality, the finite and the limitless. She describes this process by saying, “This demands letting go, and accepting the free fall of the unknown, and risking failure. The unknown is always at the edge of discovery, and is the onramp to new work.”