The Fourth Dimension was Ha-Ha, in Other Words, That it is Laughter draws its title from the 1966 Robert Smithson essay "Entropy and the New Monuments," wherein Smithson defines laughter by conflating specific architectural concepts, literary references and the new crystalline, geometric sculpture with which he aligned himself (the "ha-ha-crystal"). Pamela Fraser is interested in similar speculative moments where the deliberate might inspire the spontaneous.
Aiming to embody such optimism as a proactive philosophical mode, she seeks to assert levity in painting through delicate abstractions that marry simple forms with complex color schemes.
This exhibition, Fraser's first solo museum show, introduces a selection of large and small-scale paintings, drawings and cut-outs. Specific geometric shapes and their variations, spatial arrangements and experimentations with scale trace her explorations through color as a fluid, ineffable topic and experience — the proposed, implied and often inconsistent logic within color systems, expectations of color relationships and aesthetic decisions as value choices.
Through these works, she challenges the viewer's inherent desire for narrative and considers color as it relates to natural and man-made elements, design theory and the culturally-specific meanings of logos, branding, pie charts and diagrams.
On view through July 20.