Klang 1983

Luciano Bartolini made "Klang," with watery blues, blacks, and strokes of gold leaf, maybe on two panels, I can’t tell for sure. It's interesting to imagine Bartolini working on this—those sweeping blue gestures are so fluid, like he's chasing after something elusive. The black sort of grounds it, gives it weight, while those flashes of gold are like sudden moments of clarity or maybe just pure, unadulterated joy. The paint looks thin, almost like ink, which lets the colors blend and bleed into each other. I feel like I'm looking at something elemental, like water and light and shadow all mixed up together. It reminds me a little of some of Pat Steir’s waterfall paintings, that same sense of letting the paint do its thing, of giving up control and just seeing what happens. Ultimately, painting is about embracing the unexpected and finding meaning in the chaos.