NYAB Event - Oona Ratcliffe "Deep Forgetting"

Oona Ratcliffe "Deep Forgetting"

gallery nine 5

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Ratcliffe's paintings, seductive frenzies of color and neon line, are constructed in a framework of loose sensuality. Tending towards the acidic and artificial, saturated color is offset by impenetrable flatness, lyrical line deceived by careful manipulation, intricate image belied by an absence of modeling or brushstroke. Ratcliffe's work is a play of opposites—an endless search for frozen stillness in a world of constant movement and an inherent tension between outside and inside, transparency and opacity, nature and urbanism.

Anchored in the duality of Ratcliffe's paintings are a keen understanding of landscape and a curiosity about words and language.
What appears as the topography of a grand expanse of nature can as
easily invert to the intimate study of a microcosm. The painting
Crystal, 2008, may refer to frost on a windowpane or a lonely patch of arctic islands seen from the air. Ratcliffe also incorporates text into some of her compositions with hidden words that blur the
boundaries of signification, suggesting both the transience of
language and detritus of talk. These masked words provide respite in
the energetic surface of Ratcliffe's work for a moment of the
concrete, the recognizable attained in the midst of complexity.