Aggregation: Complexity by Integration

This body of work is a formal investigation/exploration of abstraction as it relates to space, pattern, and texture (visual and tactile) with 2D and 3D outcomes. Using commercial digital toner press, ink jet and archival pigment printing, the images are developed out of a sampling process that utilized150 pattern templates derived from a commercial printing related die-cut process. The Black and White Line -Numbered Series were made from template patterns reduced further into simplified shapes. The Die-Cut Numbered Series translates respectively, each of the images from the Black and White Numbered Series.  All of the printed images went through a process of printing, layering, and reprinting. Several images were run through the digital printer more than ten times for a specific qualitative affect.  

My image-making practice involves a dense and multi-layered use of imagery informed by my early training as a printmaker. The methods of traditional printmaking (intaglio, stone lithography, silkscreen, and woodcut) have distinctive qualities borne out of focused physical processes, which in return produce nuances of mark-making, spatial physicality, and residual evidence from mechanical interaction. Commercial printing, which involves offset and digital, aims for an image quality that is void of physical residue associated with the mechanical process.  It is in the residual space, which is affected by the hand of the practitioner, that a printed image comes alive and is perceived on a haptic level of experience.  Traditional processes of printmaking afford these haptic qualities which were/are desired and celebrated.  I have come to realize that digital printing also has these affordances. Much like any other artist's medium, digital printing has qualitative affects that can only be arrived at through an exploration of its capabilities and limitations. My digital print work is made using the Xerox iGen and Archival Pigment print, these methods continue to reveal new results and exciting surprises; not unlike those found in some of the traditional printmaking processes.

Dimensional Difference: The work of David Werberig

It is in a constraint of limits that a capacity for new ideas and actions are formed. The ‘Minimalist’ artist Donald Judd utilized a framework of limits to explore a rich and varied outcome of new relations. Judd was able to intensify the qualitative affect of his work by limiting color, form, and material options. He reduced his palette to intensify the essential qualities of surface, light, and space. His strategy of reduction created a multitude of differences directed at visual perception. It is in a similar vein that difference is explored in the work of David Werberig, on exhibit here at the Mercer Gallery. 

This recent work of Werberig developed out of an exploration of die-cut patterns used in the commercial printing industry. The patterns have been repositioned as a set of tools used to explore the relationships between line, color, and shape. The use of these patterns outside of their original context has allowed the artist to focus on inherent qualities found within their two-dimensional properties, i.e., their affordances as image generators. Werberig’s exploration is driven by an interest in variation through 2D, 3D, and 4D outcomes. He employs the principle of difference, allowing the work to overflow with a multitude of relations while maintaining a fidelity with the die-cut pattern. What develops is a type of pattern language with infinite potential. Collectively experienced, the 2D line work, the planar arrangements, and the video projections create a generous range of difference through a contiguous space of relations. Worth mentioning is the transformational aspect that “sleeps” in this body of work. The die-cut patterns are actually 3D forms-in-waiting. Their expression as form is relaxed in this exhibit, but each pattern is biased towards a spatial resolution. Without overstating the dynamic function embedded in this work, one cannot help but sense the lineage of Modernism playing out in their making. Werberig’s methodology develops out of a process of exploration infused with a capacity of difference and transformation – a basic tenant of Modernist thinking. Things inherently speak but they do not need a narrative to be heard.  It is in the making of their difference that we sense a potential for becoming more/other/future. 

- Bartow+Collaborator/Metzgar, 1-23-17

This body of work is a formal investigation of abstraction as it relates to space, pattern, and texture (visual and tactile) with digital toner, Archival Pigment Print, and collage. The images developed out of a sampling process that utilized 150 pattern templates derived from a printing related die-cut process, and a series of selected photographs from my personal photo archive.  The 8-1/2” x 11” color images (Concerted Series and Aggregation Series) were generated directly from a variety of template shapes. The Black and White Line -Numbered Series were made from template patterns reduced further into simplified shapes. The Die-Cut Numbered Series translates respectively, each of the images from the Black and White Numbered Series.  All of the printed images went through a process of printing, layering, and reprinting. Several images were run through the digital printer more than ten times for a specific qualitative affect.  

My image-making practice involves a dense and multi-layered use of imagery informed by my early training as a printmaker. The methods of traditional printmaking (intaglio, stone lithography, silkscreen, and woodcut) have distinctive qualities borne out of focused physical processes, which in return produce nuances of mark-making, spatial physicality, and residual evidence from mechanical interaction. Commercial printing, which involves offset and digital, aims for an image quality that is void of physical residue associated with the mechanical process.  It is in the residual space, which is affected by the hand of the practitioner, that a printed image comes alive and is perceived on a haptic level of experience.  Traditional processes of printmaking afford these haptic qualities which were/are desired and celebrated.  I have come to realize that digital printing also has these affordances. Much like any other artist's medium, digital printing has qualitative affects that can only be arrived at through an exploration of its capabilities and limitations. My digital print work is made using the Xerox iGen and Archival Pigment print, these methods continue to reveal new results and exciting surprises; not unlike those found in some of the traditional printmaking processes.