by Patricia Briggs, Ph.D.
Grounded in the modernist tradition which sees pure color as a metaphor for the immaterial and the spiritual, Lisa Nankivil explores paint’s ability to signify the essence of experience while leaving the representation of objects behind. In her stripe paintings Nankivil addresses the aesthetic problematic of the body’s relationship to the horizontal and vertical. Her large horizontal compositions are soothing and inviting, as the basic verticality of the human body positions the viewer in a relation of dominance relative to their rippling expansive, recumbent forms. Nankivil’s vertical compositions confront the viewer with uplifting optical pathways that orient us toward ascent. Opaque and semi transparent ribbons of variegated color flicker and skip across the surfaces of Nankivil’s canvases, flooding the senses with remarkably vivid associations and memories. These paintings communicate the idea of speed and movement; but more than anything they remind us of tastes, smells, and the feel of pleasurable things- orange saltwater toffee, rose petals, dark chocolate, pink wet skin, black velvet, blue sky bright with sun, melon, salty sea water and lavender gray dawn.
Nankivil builds the images meticulously, beginning with loose under-paintings formed from gestural brushstrokes, which she subsequently paints over and partially obscures with countless bands of color applied with improvised straight edges. While linked to the hard-edged sensibility of contemporary painting Nankivil’s stripe paintings depart from the sterility of the Pop tradition. Using rubber squeegees, T-squares, and lengths of wood and cardboard loaded with oil paint, Nankivil presses, scrapes, and smears to achieve fascinating and unusual qualities of line, edge, and remarkable stumbled patterns. In the end, Nankivil’s most sustained interest is the interplay between the embedded ground and the rich surface application we see in these works. At the intersection of the weft and warp of her multi-layered images, Nankivil makes visible and materially concrete the liminal spaces-which she calls the “spaces between”- that are formed relationally through the interaction and collision of ideas and forms.
About the author:
Patricia Briggs, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Art History and Criticism at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and a contributing writer for Artforum, New Art Examiner, and other national publications.