MR-6 1958

Conrad Marca-Relli's MR-6 is a painting built from bold marks and a striking palette of white, black and blue. Can you imagine him, wrestling with these shapes, pushing and pulling them until they sit just right? I'm always thinking about how paintings come into being, shifting and emerging through trial, error, and intuition. Look at how the white forms seem to tumble over one another. What were they originally? Are they fragments of figures, or landscapes perhaps? I love that we can't be sure, that they remain open to interpretation. See the drips and splatters that run down the canvas? These feel like moments of chance, happy accidents that add to the dynamism of the piece. For me, MR-6 feels like a conversation between Marca-Relli and other painters of his time. It’s an ongoing exchange of ideas across time, where each artist inspires the next, and the next. His painting is a form of embodied expression which embraces ambiguity and uncertainty. It allows for multiple interpretations and meaning, and avoids fixed or definitive readings.