Untitled 1974

Editor: Friedel Dzubas’s *Untitled* from 1974, painted with acrylic, throws me off. At first, the color palette and layered composition seem calming, but there's also an unsettling tension—like something is about to shift or break apart. What do you make of it? Curator: It makes me think of fractured landscapes, memory and the unreliability of perception, and how our emotional response to colour is entirely personal and shifting. Are those horizons we see, or something else? This reminds me of standing on a beach when I was a kid, trying to grasp the moment as a wave breaks on the shore. It looks like controlled chaos. Does the juxtaposition of geometric forms against these more organic shapes suggest conflict or harmony? Editor: Harmony, perhaps, but a really strange sort of harmony! Almost as if harmony has multiple levels. Tell me more about the landscapes that the artist is working with, in his painting process, is there a reference that relates him more to other works in that era? Curator: Dzubas aligns here with the Color Field painters of the time, but he brings a distinctive touch to that tradition. Think of Rothko's emotional washes, but then applied to a more spatial sense with hints of landscape. Dzubas is using acrylic paint here in a less rigid style and allows it to express it more than traditional painters during the Colour Field movements of the mid twentieth century. The goal to get into one's feelings while they reflect on color is clearly felt. What if we were to re-title the artwork *Longing*—would that alter our experience, you think? Editor: Definitely! I had never really made an effort to think of artworks in this era to reflect such internal and subjective references, but I can understand how Dzubas brings a touch of emotional expression while building landscapes. I learned a lot. Curator: Indeed! I'll look for Dzubas to take me there now.