Hot Slick 1989

Curator: Bruce McLean's "Hot Slick" uses bold color planes and figuration to create a striking visual experience. What is your immediate reaction? Editor: It’s a very energetic composition, almost jarring in its color clashes, yet there's a calmness to the figures that I find intriguing. Are they placed against or within this landscape? Curator: That's a fantastic question. The composition employs a kind of flattened perspective, pushing the figures and landscape into a shared plane, emphasizing their relationship through form and color rather than spatial depth. Editor: This reminds me of outdated, and perhaps damaging, tropes of women against foreign landscapes. It feels loaded with meaning, yet abstracted. Curator: I see it more as McLean playing with visual conventions. The simplified forms allow us to focus on the formal relationships – the tension between the geometric shapes and the organic lines of the figures. Editor: I agree that the work is deeply entrenched in the play of composition and colors. Thanks, this was an enlightening conversation. Curator: Indeed, a stimulating piece. Thank you.