Oil Fields 2013

Curator: Etel Adnan's "Oil Fields," created in 2013, immediately strikes me with its bold colors. It's deceptively simple, isn't it? Editor: Absolutely. The bright reds, yellows, and blues set against that off-white ground feels almost playful, but the interconnectedness suggested by the lines hints at something more complex, doesn't it? The forms make me think of circuit boards or interconnected industrial spaces. Curator: Exactly! Adnan's abstract vocabulary draws deeply from the landscape, yet there's always a conceptual edge. Oil fields, in reality, are landscapes transformed, exploited—aren't those sharp, angular lines, like infrastructure, hinting at systems of extraction? The colours themselves, vibrant as they are, take on an ambiguous feel; beautiful, yet suggestive of complex histories. Editor: That’s a crucial point. Abstraction allows her to convey a deeper truth about place beyond surface representation. It invites contemplation about the ways we shape and are shaped by the land. It's not a pleasant landscape; those lines suggest more complex interactions. We shape it to fuel industrial civilization. Curator: Precisely! And I feel that tension resonates in the geometric forms—the squares, circles, the insistent lines. These forms echo in early modernism but push those motifs through abstraction towards something contemporary and potent. You can feel Adnan pulling from those established forms. Editor: Yes. And seeing it within the broader context of Adnan’s work, this piece adds to her ongoing engagement with how socio-political landscapes take shape. Thinking about how "Oil Fields" fits within Adnan’s legacy makes me curious how her paintings provide not just a way of seeing, but almost an encoding, or cartography of modern anxieties. Curator: A beautiful summation, that encoding is certainly part of the piece's deep, resonating character. What do you think the casual observer will see? Do you believe they could understand that? Editor: I hope it encourages us to see beyond a pretty image. The work creates the emotional weight needed for further interrogation, for those interested in social-historical concepts, for those who want to start that journey and don't know where to start. That is where the true beauty lays.