Visual Art Mary Temple and the Doubting Zone
posted by on October 2 at 11:00 AM
Mary Temple spent weeks at Western Bridge making a huge painting that opened to the public last weekend. (The image above is from an earlier, similar installation on the East Coast.)
The painting is extremely quiet. It is white paint on white walls, and depending on the light, it can almost disappear entirely. It is painted to fool you into believing, at least for moment, that it’s not there. When you walk in, it looks like there’s nothing in the room at all, just the shadows and light beaming in from the windows of the building. This is what Temple calls “the doubting zone.” She has her reasons for sending you there.
The painting will be up for a year.
We recently saw the pair that are up at SF MOMA. It was thrilling, easily the best looking experience in the museum, and led me into an extended rant on minimalism, absract expressionism, 20th century art criticism and theory (discovering in the process that SF MOMA is light on even example canvases for high Ab Ex stuff, I suppose to NY won't ship anything west). It was hella fun, and the representational content of the images make them extremely accessible. Running from piece to piece in a venue like MOMA is really, really enjoyable.
I went to SFMOMA a couple of weeks ago to catch the end of a Frida Kahlo retrospective. A couple of floors down, Temple had two pieces in a New Work exhibit. Without a doubt, they were the most interesting pieces in the whole museum. At first, I looked for the light source, but, finding none, tried to get as close to the piece as possible. Only when I started examining the floors and walls did other people stop and notice; most didn't realize that anything was there.
Thanks for reminding me of that wonderful day.
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I was at MOMA too - I stood around unobtrusively and watched people notice, and be astounded.
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