Kim Schoenstadt and David McDonald: Non-Linear Differential Equations and Boundary Value Problems

Los Angeles artists David McDonald and Kim Schoenstadt have both produced recent works that examine the relationship of color to form. Where the color is not applied over the surface as a final step, but rather is deeply intrinsic to the objects. The colors and forms define each other equally, there is no clear indication of which came first. Their respective sculptures (McDonald) and paintings (Schoenstadt) offer a cavalcade of evidence making color feel like a raw physical ore, a medium unto itself. In doing so they prompt discussion on how perspective can influence perception. 

McDonald’s new series of sculptures are aptly titled Big Country, in that despite their modest size they engage with expansive discourses. His process of making them is inseparable from the ideas embedded in the works. Playwright Edward Albee, a longtime supporter and collector of McDonald’s work, noted “Really fine sculpture takes us beyond the “facts” of the material – metal, wood, whatever- into metaphor. It takes us beyond the concrete (no pun intended) into the implied….”  Writer and collector Geoff Tuck further observed McDonald's process “requires deliberate focus and awareness of a world of possibilities before one makes three or four simple choices.” McDonald mixes pigments into Hydrocal, the shapes he then casts are fleeting. Ephemeral forms existing only briefly as cavities in a large sand tray. He has worked with these materials for years and knows them intimately. This process purposely allows for a collaboration with entropy. McDonald builds in ample and essential moments for chance to effect the outcome. After casting, the pigments can take days to fully settle. Furthermore, he will frequently continue to refine them. These objects are fully imbued with color, the hues visible on the surface run to the core. He is able to sand elements down or saw them into parts and retain the same shades, often melding these sections into new wholes. 

Over time there is an ebb and flow between autonomy and disorder, requiring a consistent stream of slight adjustments to course, reactions to each unexpected change. McDonald likes to refer to a thought from an early 19th century Japanese text,  The Book of Tea, which reads “The truth lies in the comprehension of opposites.” 

Kim Schoenstadt also spends great deals of time meticulously researching materials to then be able to let chance play a roll. She carefully studies the weaves and thickness of countless linen options to see how they will accept paint and stitching. She has recipe books kept with a chemist’s precision noting proper paint mixtures for particular results. Her new paintings are constructed more like sculptures. These works combine three elements: acrylic paint is applied in two ways- first as a stain, then as cut collaged strips, she incorporates hand embroidered lines in the form of text and shapes into the compositions as well. In regard to the carefully stained swaths of color, like Pat Steir, Hermann Nitsch, or Helen Frankenthaler, there is a blend of confidence in application technique and confidence in the physics of liquid to behave within expected and unexpected ways. Controlled experiments. She balances this seeding of control to fluid properties though the addition of the labor-intensive stitched elements, as well as the thick strips of impasto color collaged on. This heavier color is first pushed and shaped over glass, coerced to the right proportions, then peeled off and cut into the desired forms- essentially the opposite in both texture and fabrication to the stained elements. This material contrast in how the works are first engendered is essential to these pieces.

Schoenstadt’s deep engagement with influential Modern architect Eileen Gray has been an ongoing aspect of her oeuvre and the new paintings incorporate references from Gray’s life, working method ,and imagination. Schoenstadt sees parallels between personal and global events in Gray’s time and ours- pandemic, unrest, migration, fear of 'otherness', censorship and book banning…  “people trying to control other people by controlling what ideas they're exposed to”. While not unknown, many of Gray’s achievements have been overlooked, and are still due greater attention. Her work was literally concealed and defaced by Le Corbusier. Schoenstadt’s works reference specific Gray designs, from textiles, murals, furniture, or architectural features. They also include Schoenstadt’s own compositional elements, and are constructed with widely different color palettes. The allusions all seem waiting in plain sight to be observed in these paintings, obvious to those familiar with Gray’s designs. Paralleling her larger historical legacy, in that one only needs to be aware of Gray’s work to then see its broad influence.

Schoenstadt explains that “One of the things I find really interesting was her indomitable spirit. She was sidelined as a woman, an architect, an artist, and a designer .She had no rules, because nobody cared. So she was constantly pushing, constantly doing projects for a ‘location unknown and client unknown.’ Eileen was dealing with a lot of contemporary issues of science, of literature, of just what was happening around her. Throughout her projects, including her famed E-1027 house, she literally embedded words and symbols throughout.”  Kim’s Morse Code series of paintings grew from thinking about how Gray’s use of signs, symbols and codes provided a path to address urgent topics she could not broach otherwise. Schoenstadt altered a basic running stitch into dots and dashes, exchanging length for time to embroider messages directly onto her works, expressing political opinions in stitched morse code. The smaller fragments of thicker paint in these pieces is carefully placed, usually asymmetrically, to act as a little irritants or misdirections.

Throughout Schoenstadt’s work constructed elements like the embroidery and paint interact with the looser organic stains. Ideas of boundaries come into play as symbols, referential shapes, and even coded messages become part of the porous interplay of materials and concepts ultimately clarifying one another. 

Every object has a color, yet colors themselves don’t exist independently, only an aspect of reflected light. They rest in our imagination within a category that hovers between the palpable world and the intangible realm of ideas. Like when a slight movement of muscles in the voice box turns a thought into an audible sound wave in the world, the briefest of moments where the physical and abstract brush. 

McDonald and Schoenstadt materialize artworks that pull color into a fixed state.