In “Suspension,” Annette Turow presents two bodies of work that are in many ways perfect opposites. One is made up of richly colored collages that explore themes of human intimacy; the other consists of lighter, more delicate works conjuring spiritual states. One of the pleasures of this show is marveling at the artist’s ability to navigate between the spheres.
Turow’s collages on textured cotton paper are dense and multilayered. The mottled surfaces, with their vibrant hues of blues and greens, oranges and pinks, sometimes suggest monotype or wax-resist batik. Turow works shreds of photographs into these compositions, merging them with oil stick and pastel markings, until the source material becomes almost indistinguishable amidst the many colors and shapes.
We do, however, recognize elements—human arms or legs jutting out at fierce angles, and forms that might be heads, hands and feet. They are often delineated in warm, fleshy colors, suggesting the joyful chaos of sexual and emotional congress. These abstracted figures are embedded within imagery that suggests the natural world--rocks, fibers and tree bark. It’s an elemental vision of the human condition that seems to reach back to the ancients.
Yet clearly these works are also descended from the Modernists. Turow’s emotive use of color harks back to Kandinsky; her organic forms share DNA with Marsden Hartley and Arthur Dove. They are part of a conversation between figuration and abstraction launched at the dawn of the twentieth century that continues to this day.
In contrast to the collages, Turow’s other body of work—her most recent—is done on satiny Yupo paper with a mix of oil pastel, acrylics, ink, charcoal and pencil. Here, the palette is lighter, the marks more spontaneous. It seems the artist’s hand has skimmed across the surface, like a skater on ice. Against a bed of greys and pearly whites, her soft blues, yellows and pinks suggest more shadow than substance.
That insubstantiality is central to Turow’s subject. One series, “And I Shall Dwell Among You,” is a meditation on the God of the Torah. As told in the story of the Jews’ exodus from Egypt, “The Lord went before them in a pillar of cloud by day, to guide them along the way.” The artist imagines that cloud as a shimmering thing that surrounds us. In her depiction, it is deep, complex and gorgeous.
Her other series, “Suspended,” also adopts a light color palette—along with streaks of inky black—and takes an even more spontaneous approach. Turow has splashed, brushed, wiped and dripped, and it would not be wrong to trace the lineage of these works through Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler and even Joan Snyder. Turow’s take on abstraction in these works is at once spiritual and lyrical—a fine balance to the earthy collages. Seeing them side-by-side here reveals how complementary these two apparent opposites really are.