Untitled 

Curator: Here we have an untitled painting by Antonio Palolo. There’s no date available. It appears to be acrylic on canvas. What are your initial thoughts? Editor: Wow, it's a little dizzying, isn't it? Like someone took a Mondrian and stretched it out. I’m seeing bold colours, clear lines… very graphic. Gives off a retro, maybe even an overtly designed sort of feeling, like 70's wallpaper or something. Curator: Interesting! It’s got definite op art and pop art vibes. These were certainly in dialogue with industrial production and mass media, and were playing with geometric abstraction at this time. Look at how the canvas is divided into those four distinct rectangles, each with its own specific color sequence. The use of those acrylic paints gives it a flat, almost printed feel. Editor: Exactly. Flat is a great word for it. Almost… mechanical. Like each stripe was meticulously placed by a machine. I almost don’t sense a “human” hand, paradoxically, which for me generates interest, or wonder, in a totally different fashion than the "tortured artist" kind. It challenges our expectations of what painting even is, what value labor provides... Curator: Precisely! The "Hard-edge painting" movement comes to mind here too, where the artist aimed to create planes of pure colour, distinct from the brushstroke, really foregrounding colour as a thing in itself, its inherent optical and affective effects. Think also about Colour Field painting, an abstraction preoccupied by opening up space for purely optical experience and contemplation via large, plain areas of bold colours. Editor: It does prompt contemplation. At first glance, it seemed simple, but the more you look, the more complex it feels. What do these specific blocks or lines communicate about their own seriality, or serial production? Is the painting reflecting, implicitly or explicitly, on labor and its relation to industrial practice? Questions I would love to ask Palolo if he were here! Curator: Absolutely, you’ve touched on something vital about the implications and questions that abstract art can evoke and investigate by questioning the means and ends of its own production! Thanks for adding that artist’s perspective to the painting! Editor: My pleasure. It makes me think about my own artistic relationship with industrial supplies, even what computer tools and interfaces do or do not provide, limit, or enable! It's all material.