DRAWING THE SQUARE
BY EDWARD J. SAYWELL
Gloria Ortiz-Hernández’s recent abstract drawings address directly the process and perception of art. She limits herself to the simplest and most restrained of pictorial vocabularies—a black square on white paper—to examine fully how the choice of medium and compositional forms is critical to “the act of seeing.” In exploring the universal process of how we all perceive visual information, her work, free from self-expression and any preexisting narrative, is not intended as an end in itself, but calls for completion through the viewer’s own personal interpretation and understanding of the work.
Common to all of Ortiz-Hernández’s drawings is the form of the black square. Simultaneously one of the most straightforward and powerful of shapes, the square holds the space of the paper with great authority. The blackness of the squares, however, moves the concern of the drawings beyond that of just form to that of weight and physical structure. By grouping or pairing together works that are identical apart from weight of the blackness, Ortiz-Hernández makes explicit how the subtlest of changes can affect our perceptual experience of the square’s interaction with the surrounding space of the pristine white paper. With exceptional sensitivity to the weight of the black, she uses just three variables to tease out the most remarkable of variations: tone, choice of medium and, common to all drawings, the diffusion of the hard-edged clarity of the squares’ edges.
When defined in outline by clean-cut hard edges, the form of the square is hermetic, shut-off, and impenetrable. In works such as the five drawings that constitute the series, Sum II, Ortiz-Hernández articulates the perimeter of the square with a soft, sfumato quality, the edges become mutable and elusive. In pulling the pencil out very gently from the square, its form slips into the surrounding luminous space of the white paper, diffusing the weight of the black and thereby lightening the mass of the square. Without the release that comes from this diffusion, the square would be read as a flat silhouette, unyielding to the surrounding space.
The importance of this diffusion is highlighted in the series of the drawings, Quadrate II. Unlike Ortiz-Hernández’s other drawings in which the diffusion of the black is evident along all four sides of the square, in these five drawings only the top edge fully dissolves into the surrounding space. A very strong upward release of the weight and the sense of a horizon to the drawings create a very different effect to that of the drawings in Sum II. Close scrutiny of the images, however, reveals that none of the other three edges is fully contained by a straight, hard-edged boundary. By drawing the pencil up against her fingernail, the artist creates a slightly uneven edge, rendering the hard-edged materiality of the square subtly permeable and open to the possibility of both infusion and diffusion.
The weight of the blackness is modulated further by what Ortiz-Hernández has called an “unfolding of the solid square” through a gradual diminution of tone from one drawing to another. In the series Sum II, for example, Ortiz- Hernández delights in the tactile beauty and immediacy of the pencil in creating the most delicately nuanced opacities. Describing the pencil as a natural extension of her hand, the artist establishes the weight of each of the black squares by putting down layer after layer—twelve in all—of the most carefully controlled pencil strokes.
Defining the desired tone for each square in one corner, she weaves thousands of tiny strokes, first across and then up and down, within the shape of the square, maintaining the tone throughout. With each of the squares in the five drawings possessing a slightly different tonality, the entire series is a masterful manipulation of delicate tonalities from the heaviest to the lightest. Although each square appears extremely dense, the individual graphite strokes almost imperceptible, the series as a whole has a diffuse and elusive effect, simple but complex at the same time.
Most recently, Ortiz-Hernández has started to experiment with the use of different media to produce a similar effect. Here, we see that even though our initial encounter with a work of art is always with its physical surface, we normally give little attention to exploring how the marks and materials that articulate and define the image can alter our entire perception of the image. The works drawn with graphite, for example, such as Square 9, reveal how her treatment of the medium sucks in the light, resulting in a surface hard to penetrate. The drawing seems more introspective and impenetrable than Square 4, a drawing from the same series and identical in all respects apart from the medium. Drawn with a combination of lithographic crayon and crayon, the surface of Square 4 absorbs less light, lightening the weight of the black and rendering the drawing more approachable.
Ortiz-Hernández is quite explicit about the nature and purpose of her artistic vision: by keeping her drawings free from personal sentimentality and any defined narrative, the responsibility for their interpretation is placed on the viewer’s own vision. With their exceptional control and sensitivity, her drawings are quite sublime to behold and contemplate. They allow us the opportunity and free space to arrive at, or revise, our own understanding of that most remarkable process, that of perception itself.
EDWARD J. SAYWELL is Chair, Linde Family Wing, and Chair, Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art and Arthur K. Solomon Curator of Modern Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts.