Cronos 31 1982

Rene Duvillier made "Cronos 31" with gentle washes of paint. I'm really drawn to the surface, and I think about the material aspect of painting, how the artist made a stain on the canvas and how the material behaves. I can imagine the artist being in the studio, thinking, "Oh, what can I do with this now?" It is so quiet and light, and the gestures are just so subtle. Look how the spiral comes out of the depths, and the horizontals guide your eye across the surface. What you end up seeing are subtle things in the material—textures, places where it's darker, places where it's lighter, evidence of time passing. There is this incredible moment of connection with the history of painting; a conversation across time. Duvillier's work reminds us that painting is not just about what we see, but also about how we see.