Allison Lasley: Rome Journals

The grid has been used in Modern art for a variety of purposes and effects. These range from the mystical grids of Alfred Jenson, the sagging grids of Eva Hesse, and the densely repetitive grids of Sol LeWitt. In Lasley’s hands, the grid offers a framework which provides an illusion of regularity. Yet within this framework, all the variations of daily life and experience can be expressed. On one level, each panel could exist as an independent painting. Some of the panels seem like tiny fragments of larger wholes - one can imagine them extending indefinitely beyond the edges of the paper. Others seem complete in themselves, tiny paintings which are exquisitely self contained.

Taken together the tapestry of small paintings expresses the complex texture of lived experience, where sights, sounds, and smells mingle with dreams, memories, and fantasies. Subtle changes across the grid become a map of the incremental progress of the passing days.

The individual panels express a variety of responses to Rome. Quite a few take as their departure point the rich and varied architecture of the city. Among Lasley’s sources of inspiration are Rome’s Pantheon, colonnades, gates, rotundas and labyrinths. In her hands, these are translated into abstract forms and patterns which make reference as well to modernist paintings. Often fleeting hints of their sources are all that remain.

Thus, rows of columns become a series of bars which bring to mind the stripe paintings of Brice Marden or Sean Scully. Gates and apertures become simple arches, while many of the paintings are composed of a simple four part grid which also suggests a window. Formal gardens are transformed into schematic arrangements of rectangles and circles. In several panels, the capitals of Corinthian columns become a playful filigree composed of whiplash lines. There are also a number of crosses. These make references to the city’s ecclesiastical buildings, but they also make one think of the quiet black on black paintings of Ad Reinhardt.