Carole Seborovski: Underlying Lines, 1991

Carole Seborovski’s drawings from the period 1986-91, relatively small in scale, seem to be heirs to minimalist abstraction. Although they are characterized by a reduced palette and stark geometry, however, their emphasis on surface, material, and process widens their range of reference.

This 1991 drawing at first appears to be composed of several discrete fields. Vertical in its orientation, Underlying Lines is divided into two registers, the lower one occupying about two-thirds of the picture plane. A band of white about an inch wide is set in about a half-inch from each vertical edge, traversing the ground from top to bottom. These are collage elements—strips of paper laid on the surface—as is the white horizontal line that divides the registers.

Recognizing their components, we observe that the top and bottom registers are really a continuous field, created with different media to achieve texturally distinct surfaces. The bottom register contains thin vertical strips of paper covered with black pastel, producing a dense, flat, velvety texture, sensuous but unreflective.

The alternation of flat areas with what appears to be a more dimensional ground continues in the top register. But here Seborovski has laid the paper over diagonal strips and taken their print by rubbing the surface with graphite. The finish is shinier than that of the bottom section: a silvery flint gray. The texture is more marbled and reflective, and the weave of the paper is visible where the graphite is less opaque. Process has left its traces in varied effects.

The extent to which line underlies line, and the ways in which permutations of line suggest the thickness of paper, render the ground of Seborovski’s abstraction almost three-dimensional and her seemingly minimal work almost lush in its quality of surface and detail.