CITY_SCAPES
Architecture is the foundational aspect of Barry Ginder’s body of paintings, inspired by the sculptural interplay of frontality and depth in urban fabric, and seemingly woven into the painting’s surface to embody light, material weight, texture, and transparency. Like his architectural work, there is a contrast between precision and suggestion, between articulate profile lines and the hazy insinuation of what lies just beyond.
Developed as ‘excerpts’ of urban landscapes, Barry employs techniques of both accumulation and erasure to transform the translucent surfaces of the paintings in a layered process. His intuitive use of classical under-painting with complementary colors in the background creates a vibrancy and depth of surface, scored with architectural linework reflective of underlying geometries and profiles. Reciprocal sanding and rebuilding of pigments alters the surface while revealing apparent aspects of earlier figures. As a counterpoint, the mylar studies present investigations of discrete conditions or ‘moments,’ constructed of overlapping washes and latent lines, an additive process applied in translucent veils.
Experimenting in material and technique, the process of building the surfaces is employed to capture subtleties of depth and transparency, juxtaposed with surfaces drenched in light or saturated in shade. Visible traces of the re-working lend to each painting a spatial transparency and shifting temporal quality that situate Barry’s body of work between representational and abstract modes of seeing.
by Suzanne K. Brandt
