Zuma #20 1978

John Divola made this photograph, Zuma #20, with film and a camera. It's a quiet scene: a window, charred by fire, that looks out onto the ocean. I can imagine Divola framing this shot, seeing the burnt frame as a ready-made composition. He probably liked the contrast, a visual tension: ruin and tranquility, destruction, and open possibility. The texture of the wood itself, blistered and warped, reminds me of thick impasto in painting. There’s a lot of beauty in surfaces that have been worn down. Think of Gerhard Richter’s color charts or even Vija Celmins’s drawings of the ocean – Divola is part of that club. It makes me think about how artists are always finding new ways to see the world and then showing us those ways with the marks they make. It’s a quiet conversation across time.