Unified Field :: Verenigd Gebied

Connie Goldman
Cecilia Vissers

Helmut Federle posits that there has never been a significant period in world history where art and society exist on the same level, that the solitary alienation of the artist within society is unavoidable. Federle suggests contemporary American art embodies a prescience of striving for base values; reasons to exist, and that the the toxic pall cast by our current financial debacle weighs in heavily as far as American art being produced today. By comparison, the European arena embraces the existence of art as art itself, without questioning the being or lack thereof of underlying creative desires and energies.

Connie Goldman Gray Scale RippleV 16x16x3 inches Oil on wood panel 2007

From this rather isolated pile of rocks in the Atlantic, I admit it is difficult to weigh in with much substance. One thing is for certain: as a contemporary artist working within a global field, it is extraordinary to be able to share and connect ideas and language with one another. I may lead a hermetic life, but my society, as I choose to define it, is vital.

Recently I've been introduced to two artists working within the same reductive aesthetic as myself, Connie Goldman from California, in the United States, and Cecilia Vissers from

Sint-Oedenrode, The Netherlands. We each embrace the importance of space, rhythm and structure within our work. As Cecilia has said to me,

Cecial Visser's Ateliar Sint-Oedenrode, The Netherlands, 2009

"...It is very important to find interesting spaces for reductive art, all over the world, as it is a very specific form of art. We go back to basics, sometimes it feels like living on a very small island. We need to cross borders and swim oceans, be strong and not get lost in 'artland'....".

Cecilia Vissers

Cecilia Vissers makes wall and floor sculptures in steel. She is interested in concepts of strength and power, minimal intervention, and isolation. For her, this uncompromising material is an essential and consistent factor. Vissers strives to create simple compositions of restricted color and primary shapes, responding deeply to the character of thick plates of warm-rolled steel, the specific surface texture and weight. The wall sculptures are pure, minimal in nature. The adage of modernist architects from the early 20th century, ‘less is more’, would be an excellent characterization.

Cecilia Vissers Needles and Pins

The work is driven by power, rhythm, repetition and pattern. Logic is regularly challenged in apparently inflexible materials and irrefutable forms. Her plate steel sculptures are executed in 8/15 mm steel, and weigh up to 200 kg, with one or perhaps several minimal saw cuts, only enough to produce a clear and concentrated form.

Cecilia Vissers

" I strive to find a clarity and concentration of form, line and color through minimal intervention enacted in a plate of steel."

The steel plates are immersed in four separate baths, a process of electrolysis referred to as anodization. The resulting patinas are bonded permanently to the surfaces, eliciting rich

Cecilia Vissers Studio, 2009

tones of hue to the steel plates. For Vissers, the steel plates, which are made in Germany, function as large sponges saturated with strength, power, life, death and history.

Cecila Vissers, Wald, Anodized Aluminum, 30 x 24.5 x 1.5 cm each, 2009 Elements Gallery, Waalre, The Netherlands

"... I am looking for simplicity in a raging world, a world that I am very happy to discover but also need to avoid every now and then."

Cecilia Vissers work can be seen at Elements Gallery in Waarle, The Netherlands. Her upcoming Paris exhibition, En Forme, with the artist Eric Cruikshank opens in 2010 at ParisCONCRET .


Connie Goldman

Connie Goldman creates wall sculptures of layered, shaped and painted wood. Her reductive constructions focus on the spaces created between layers of flat, modular planes. Her work begins as very loose sketches which are eventually translated into shaped wooden panels. The panels are meticulously painted and put together in layers. There is a harmony; balance within this meditative, beautiful work.

Connie Goldman Captive I Oil on Wood Panel, 53x43 inches 2006

In her own words:

"Using a minimalist vocabulary and a reductive aesthetic that emphasizes the importance of space, rhythm, structure, and relations, I make works of art that are concrete and essential approximations of my own emotional and intellectual experiences. The work reflects my interests in architecture, music, science, sculpture, and painting as well as the threads of commonality that run between them.

Connie Goldman Eddy

"The tendency or desire to gravitate toward unity and stability is in opposition to the urge toward independence, transition, and growth. My work evokes this same tension, the dynamic that underlies my own existence. I see each piece as being analogous to the rhythmic and contradictory forces of stasis and flux that propel my world toward both constancy and change".


Connie Goldman Current VIII

Goldman's lyrical compositions yield a variety of quiet shadows which broaden the spaces in between the flat but open modular constructions. The various planes become an interplay of light, space and form, giving each configuration a sophisticated elegance.

Connie Goldman Arena IV 12x11x2 inches Oil on Wood Panel 2008

Connie Goldman exhibits her artwork nationally and teaches at colleges and universities throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. She is represented by Peter Blake Gallery in Laguna Beach, CA. Her work is included in many public and private collections.




Thanks, Connie
Dank, Cecilia

Speak Line, Shape :: Brent Hallard

060908# 'miyu', 8.27" x 11.69" card on Japanese cotton museum board mounted onto expanded PVC

For me, line is being. When I look at a beautiful drawing, my heart beats faster; I am seduced with the reckoning of space by artist and mark. I respond to line, to shape, to color; to order and to structure; the architectronics of space, both obvious and obscure. I believe drawings can be created as an intuitive response to material placed within a certain defined location, at a certain velocity, within a certain moment. In such processes, the resulting drawings are evidenced as the mechanics of time and structure evolve.


Pour faire simple - at ParisCONCRET. The exhibition marks the opening of a new establishment in Paris devoted to abstract and reductive art.

If you are familiar with my work, you know that I also believe drawing to be a form of visual intelligence; a record of thinking and re-thinking through repetitive attention to formal elements. Brent Hallard creates drawings within this dialogue. As he says, "The spin is in the story that the line and shape speak".

Brent grew up in Sydney Australia. He has lived in Germany and the UK, and currently in Tokyo, Japan. He runs a project space near the Jiyugaoka district called Bus-Dori. Brent keeps a studio blog, ConcretePhone, as well as Visual Discrepancies, where he interviews contemporary artists such as Kevin Finklea, Mel Prest, John Tallman, Doug Witmer, Linn Meyers, and
Shinsuke Aso.

Hallard Studio shot of small mock templates that are being turned in physical signs using corrugated plastic, sheet plastic (that resembles shoji), with Japanese acrylic resin for the color line

Brent's work is evidenced in vividly graphic, scaled segments of line and color positioned within varying spacial parameters. His drawings are a sort of metaphysical exploration of concrete space, implicit with tension arrived at via combined oppositional structures such as controlled line and vast expanse; noise and quietude; the grounded and the gravity-defying; the formalistic and the conceptual.

acrylic and pencil on cut and folded paper, 8.5 x 11.7 in., 2008

"...What I’m actually looking for are a set of lines that work well while keeping the interest in a visual flux. The template drawings are usually small. I use painted tape to clarify choices, but also to hunt out other viable ways of bringing the experience out. I work with very simple materials and employ simple rules that eventually get broken. In the end it’s in the monkey business that you get good rhyme, reason, and rhythm".


spare snippet

Visually spare, yet ephemeral, Brent's work embraces a reductive, perhaps Minimalist aesthetic. But with life. Line is an entrance to surface, and beyond, by sheer constructivist physicality. It moves fluidly, shifts into dimensional form, flattens and returns to quiet. Color, both as chroma and substance, clinches the deal: Japanese acrylic resin on plastic paper, colored tape, mounted board, walls, and layers of corrugated plastic. Simplicity, and beauty.

Spa-t_kiss -pink fb

".... Each of us have our special moment with art, and I have mine too. It's a moment defining a frame within a space, a moment that moves clock-wise, or, and then, anti-clockwise. It's a moment above and below the moment. It's a moment that floods and sinks. It's a moment that pours into every empty cabin-space. It's a moment that moves deeper into the moment. This moment eventually breaks into two, and is engulfed by the one, and as an ocean, drives us through".

TRANSformal at Pharmaka, LA, 2009


Yes, your line and shape do speak.




Thanks, Brent.