Sarah Slavick
Sarah Slavick explores the tension between rationally ordered and organic systems in her brightly colored paintings and works on paper. In the paintings, constructed of small square panels, she creates complex structures which interconnect, often around a central orb. The works on paper are cut into squares and pieced together so that the original order of her forms is broken and reconfigured. Throughout her work, maze-like sets of organic forms resemble snaking worms or seed pods, and connect and break apart. Because the resulting framework of life-like forms is firmly wedded to the grid she creates a tension between technological and biological order. Slavick also implements an ambiguous scale so these systems equally resemble an aerial view of a city at night or a microscopic view of organic matter. This ambiguity is conscious – she proposes that abstraction is “a way to understand what we cannot see.” Slavick’s complicated forces simultaneously suggest consumption and regeneration like a virus or the building of a city, and thus reference both destruction and renewal on very great, and very small scales.
Sarah Slavick resides in Jamaica Plain, MA
Image: Sarah Slavick, Transmute, 2006, oil on wood, 36” x 36”, Lent by the Artist
