MARK GROTJAHN | Untitled (Black + Cream #575)

Private Collection, Europe

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. The sheet is attached verso to the backing board in several places and undulates slightly. All surface irregularities are in keeping with the artist's working process. Very close inspection reveals a tiny nick to the extreme left edge, approximately 1cm from the lower left corner tip.
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Untitled (Black + Cream #575), 2007 is a brilliant example of Mark Grotjahn’s iconic Butterfly series. Drawn entirely by hand, the present work features black and white stripes that radiate from the centre, creating a visual vortex that immediately draws the viewer in. The bold lines converge towards two neighbouring vanishing points, forming a doubled centre and splitting the composition in two halves. Untitled (Black + Cream #575) has a simple monochromatic colour scheme and abstract composition, but also shows complex understandings of spatial relations. The dynamic movement of a butterfly is effectively conveyed through the two slightly unaligned vanishing points, giving the impression of movement and flight. The Butterfly series became Grotjahn’s trademark, as Michael Ned Holte noted: “The butterfly has become to Mark Grotjahn what the target is to Kenneth Noland, the zip was to Barnett Newman, and the colour white is to Robert Ryman. Grotjahn’s abstracted geometric figure is suitably elusive. In fact, the more familiar it becomes, the more he refines its ability to surprise and, perhaps paradoxically, takes it further away from actual butterflyness” (Michael Ned Holte, ‘Mark Grotjahn’, Artforum, November 2005, p. 259). In 2002, Grotjahn was playing card games for income: “I played like an addict, maybe 13 or 14 hours a day, seven days a week” (Jori Finkel,'Childlike, but Hardly Child's Play.' New York Times, May 2014, online). It was during this time when he developed the Butterfly series from his earlier perspective paintings. In those works, bold streaks of colour radiate from a horizon line, almost like a sunset. Grotjahn, however, was not satisfied with these paintings until he rotated the canvas 90 degrees: “I found that rotating it took all the landscape out, so it became a nonobjective painting” (Ibid.). In Untitled (Black + Cream #575), the lines are perfectly straight, as each pencil work is drawn is marked on the paper with precision and strength by the artist himself. This personal process brings Grotjahn’s works back to “a tradition that goes back to early abstract painting by Mondrian and Malevich” (Ibid.). Grotjahn first systematically divides the paper into sections, then fills it in in order from left to right and top to bottom, almost like the hand of a clock. This contrast between the manual touch and the mechanical process shows careful composure and organisation, whilst demonstrating the tension between control and freedom. Drawing on traditional techniques of Renaissance two-point perspective, Grotjahn makes his personal twist to the abstraction of vanishing points by engaging with Op art and Constructivist influences. The two vanishing points are slightly asymmetrical, creating a disjointed visual effect as the viewer’s adjusts to the unbalance. Like a pinwheel, the alternating black and white stripes in Untitled (Black + Cream #575) are arranged in an almost circular shape, creating a mesmerising and dizzying effect similar to an optical illusion. With the present work, Grotjahn creates a disruption of perspective and pictorial depth, effectively closing “the line between abstract geometry and illusionistic spatiality” (Douglas Fogle, ‘In the Center of the Infinite: Mark Grotjahn’, Parkett, No. 80, 2007, p. 117).