Blood Feud - 28.8.07 2007

Curator: John Hoyland created "Blood Feud - 28.8.07" in 2007 using acrylic paint. What are your initial thoughts? Editor: Explosive! The contrasting colors—that fiery central shape against the cool green background—create such immediate visual drama. Curator: Yes, Hoyland's abstract expressionist style relies heavily on color to evoke primal feelings. Blood Feud, with that date specifically, makes me think of cycles of violence throughout history and our continued attraction to the spectacle. Editor: Interesting. To me, the geometry here—the tension between that imperfect, circular, hot core and the straight, almost weapon-like lines radiating outwards—seems crucial. Are we looking at the formal vocabulary of conflict? Curator: Precisely. Even the splatters contribute; it's like blood spatter radiating outwards, memorializing conflict on the canvas, transforming an abstract space into a cultural repository. What's fascinating is the almost ritualistic recurrence, as this dynamic exists across countless iterations in the world's collection of symbolic artwork. Editor: It does provoke associations. Though on its own, it is really the impasto that grabs me. You can see where the artist has built layer upon layer; the materiality itself speaks to accumulation, a kind of visual palimpsest where the present bares traces of conflict from the past. Curator: And doesn’t that textural density contribute to a powerful sensation of overwhelming trauma that lingers in time? Editor: It does. There is a great deal to ponder within its compositional structure. Curator: Yes, it is a potent synthesis of formal and symbolic elements. A conversation for us to continue in other artworks on view! Editor: Absolutely! It has shifted the ground for me here.