Annabeth Marks

“Color is an affirmation of presence so strong that it is almost human, almost alive.” - Etel Adnan

Parker Gallery is proud to present Continuous Time, Annabeth Marks’ debut solo presentation at the gallery. The exhibition will feature an ensemble of new constructed paintings, including the largest and most complex examples to date, marking a considerable scale shift within this body of work. Marks is known for her woven paintings in rich, finely tuned color. Constructed out of painted canvas, their final form is the result of a series of actions expressed over long stretches of time, in a process of constant revision and transformation. Cut, layered and woven pieces form the variably loose and tightly gridded structure of her paintings, which themselves can be viewed as meditations on change itself. Removed from and extending beyond the confines of the stretcher, Marks’ paintings encompass sculptural form and embodied presence. While the grid is a loose motif across her practice, each painting has its own unique internal logic and structural integrity, each its own specific color scheme charged with associative and emotive qualities. The artist hand mixes her own paint in order to achieve the desired vibration of hues within the work, in some cases highlighting a solid tone—as in Silver Spirit and Iron Rich Edge—or building on relational combinations to activate a different kind of energy. As Marks notes, “While painting, color structures this investigation of material and pictorial space, it is the matter that moves between forms and projects out towards the viewer. I create visual relationships in my work that weave the eye in and out, between solid, flat color and depth, between illusion and the material complexity of a surface. The paintings are high chroma - I am interested in the gut level emotional currency that highly saturated color provokes.” The largest works in the exhibition have a direct relationship to the scale of the human body, the woven elements knitting together like a rib cage. In Silver Spirit, a productive tension between color uniformity and surface relief combine to create a work that relishes in minute gestures of difference. Another work, Slipper, features a central red abstraction on dark ground, surrounded by a contrasting matte application of solid pink. Tabs of varying widths and lengths extend beyond the stretcher, drawing the eye down just as the center draws you in.

Also on view are a selection of the artist’s Weaving paintings, intimately scaled works that combine overlapping vertical and horizontal painted lines in variable color combinations, producing a grid like pattern of opacity and translucency. Like the constructed paintings, these works hold in balance gesture, form and time.