Wallspace is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings and drawings by Deborah Remington, made between 1963 and 1983.

It feels like an opportune time to consider Remington’s idiosyncratic paintings and drawings. Having become used to looking at glowing, backlit images on computer screens, Remington’s immaculately rendered forms, bathed in a completely unnatural light, can be understood and embraced in new ways by the today’s viewer.

Although she was born on the East coast, Remington studied with Clyfford Still and Elmer Bischoff at the California School of Fine Arts (which later became the San Francisco Art Institute) and is closely associated with San Francisco’s Beat generation. Although Remington’s earlier work was tied to more traditional abstract painting, her signature works have never been part of any school or movement and the current climate of stylistic diversity finally provides a more receptive audience.

Remington’s paintings present floating shield-like shapes organized around a central axis. These images, which are bilaterally symmetrical, are at once organic and machine-like. The frontal shapes suggest mirrors and armor, an imagery that is simultaneously attractive and off-putting, as well as compelling and unforgettable. It has roots in both the imagery of Surrealism and of the Machine Age.

Remington’s palette is unusual as she tends to limit her colors to black and white, electric red and blue, a deep green and small touches of orange. This unexpected color system complements and expands upon the singularity of her imagery.

By altering her imagery to suit the medium and scale of her drawings, the central schema becomes asymmetric and increasingly segmented, as compared to her paintings. The graphite surface is velvety, giving the drawings a sense of touch and warmth. The light seems warmer as well, as though lit by incandescent bulbs rather than fluorescents, which otherwise light the paintings externally.

Jay Gorney