Untitled 2007

Monique Orsini made this untitled painting with, I’m guessing, oil paint, and what's cool is how the brushstrokes feel raw and almost accidental, like she was more interested in the process than the outcome, which is the best way. Look at the texture, the way the red and black kind of battle it out, thick in some places and thin in others, almost transparent, like a stain. It makes you wonder, what kind of tools did she use? Was it a brush, a rag, or maybe even just her hands? The physicality of the medium is right there on the surface, demanding attention, like she's really pushing the paint around, making it do things it doesn’t want to do. There’s a boldness in that red patch at the bottom, it anchors the whole piece, but it's also kind of defiant, like it doesn’t care if it fits in or not. This reminds me a bit of Joan Mitchell, in the sense that the painting is an ongoing exchange of ideas across time, that embraces ambiguity.