prima facie, new paintings by Judith Sanazaro were exhibited at JNG in Kansas City in March and April, 2000.
Prima facie, Latin for "on first appearance", alluded to the double meaning of Ms. Sanazaro's then new body of large and small paintings. "My paintings can be enjoyed purely as visual sensations and ornamentation, but they can also be seen as having various other levels of meaning." The work continues her investigation of "physicality of surface as displacement of body, suppressed by modernism as too feminine in favor of pure opticality (supposedly the reflection of an ideal, sublimated state of mind)." Appropriately, her painting tool is her bare hands with which she applies the paint to the unprimed linen.
Intense primary and offbeat colors co-mingle with the bare linen surface and gray oil paint sludge. In some paintings, tendril-like forms negotiate their way through the topography, perhaps trying to reach an edge of the work and escape. In others (e.g. Space Invaders), more volumetric forms appear willing to stay within the painting, but are ready to contest the other forms for dominance; all is in fine balance. The color forms "present a different range of content; they refer to popular culture, science fiction, contemporary pop surrealism, flora, etc., and negotiate the meaning of the paintings."
One unusual element of the work is the sludge. It is created as the artist scrapes still wet, multi-colored paint from previous paintings and seals it in a can for reuse. "As canned angst it allows me a measure of distance in placement of paint. It's irregular topography evokes a sense of the informe as body unbound from it's skin, the gray matter of the brain dispersed and absorbed into the linen, as a transgression of the gestalt."
Judith Sanazaro, prima facie, installation view
