Pamela Fraser at Golden
Caitlin A. Schriner
Untitled (Double Orange) 2009
It is a short walk to Golden gallery from my house. Tucked away in a residential part of Lakeview, the gallery is situated on Newport Ave.— one of those streets that bridges the bars of Wrigleyville with those of Boystown, it is a short walk to Golden gallery from my own house. A converted apartment, Golden is not an apartment gallery as we are ever so familiar with here in Chicago, but rather it is a white-walled pristinely empty space devoted entirely to the role of a gallery. A considerable crowd came to Golden Friday night for the opening of Pamela Fraser’s Works on Paper.
Fraser’s eight-painting collection on polypropylene explores the world of color-relations and explorations. Fraser experiments with a few different compositions, but ultimately the collection is a cohesive presentation of the nature and interactions of color pigments.
As a whole, the show is good. With that said, there are certain pieces that are remarkably better than others. Fraser’s strength lies in her ability to meld color. The first piece you view entering the gallery is one of these specimens of organic color behavior. While the colors in Untitled (Double Orange) are anything but organic, the interaction of the wet medium is natural and unforced. The vivid orange begins to seep into a pool of splotched blue, while another circle of orange bleeds into a small wedge of green. The edges are raw and un-contained as they spider into the white of the paper.
Untitled (Brown with Frame) 2009
Untitled (Brown with Frame) is equally beautiful for similar reasons. The reds, yellows, and oranges are inundated by the dominant brown that begins to seep and “dirty” many of the colors. An imperfect graphite circle has been placed as a border, but the paints have ignored its constraint by seeping past the line and to the edge of the page. The work embraces the nature of water-based medium and the interaction of these color pigments.
Continuing on the theme of color relation, Fraser also includes the less-dramatic Untitled (Nelson Diagram). An overt reference to the well-known painting wheel, the spaced dots leave trails of blown pigment that meet in the center re-creating the color-teaching tool. While the piece is interesting, and by no means a bad piece, it doesn’t embrace the nature of pigments as many of the other pieces do, and is perhaps too overtly an homage to Fraser’s time teaching color theory.
Untitled (Nelson Diagram) 2009
What is particularly enjoyable about Fraser’s interest in color is her respect for blank space. The layout of each piece is carefully considered and the background white centers the attention on the color specimens. The size of Fraser’s work is appropriate for Golden’s unconventional layout. Each room housed two works of medium size, allowing ample wall space for each piece. While the crowds of the opening cramped the hallway, occasionally making passage from room to room difficult, it was hardly a setback as the crowd was engaged and enthusiastic about Fraser’s latest collection.
Pamela Fraser Works on Paper will be showing through March 27th at Golden located at 816 W. Newport Ave.
