‘ B E I N G ‘
by Brian Sanchez
a Solo Exhibition
at Winston Wachter
January 10th - February 24th 2024
Seattle, WA
Exhibition text written by Emily Tanner-McLean
The Color Field Painting Movement that began almost a century ago – with large planes of flat, solid hues – resurfaces as a revised verse in Brian Sanchez’s paintings today. In 1948, Barnett Newman, one of this movement’s icons, declared that he and his fellow painters were “creating images whose reality is self-evident and which are devoid of the props and crutches that evoke associations with outmoded images, both sublime and beautiful…” In a time when post-war industrialism exponentially exploited our sentience – what we see, hear, think, and feel – as grist for the consumer-capitalist mill, it’s easy to understand Color Field Painting’s emergence. Though a subset of Abstract Expressionism, its works were almost completely devoid of “expression,” or human articles, signs, or gestures, placing unadulterated color over the painter. Thus, this movement stripped “painting” of the “noise” to honor its essence while simultaneously humbling ours.
Today, as we close out the first quarter of the 21st century, we’ve learned much about the toxicity of our self-destructive tendencies. Yet the wisdom to effectuate this knowledge remains eerily absent. Distracting us from addressing this absence with the energy it deserves are endless things to click, watch, purchase, post, and consume – a relentless “noisy” current of instant gratification that form a shell of a human experience and loosen our grip on the real one.
This is where Sanchez’s latest paintings meet us, in a show titled “Being”. His canvases range from small to gigantic, each a symphonic merging of pigments ranging from dark and ominous to earthy and organic to bright and electric, delivered through robust contours and plates. Indeed, many compositions resemble the undulation of sound waves. Others could pass as endless corridors or portals through infinite planes. Each composition carries boundless optical movement within it, which ironically overwhelms the sensors of smartphone cameras, obfuscating photos of his paintings taken on these devices. And all compositions are rendered with machine-like precision and consistency, lending a futuristic quality. Only an up-close study of Sanchez’s crisp edges – which he monastically produces without any aid other than a honed eye and hand – can one detect the tiniest of traces of their creator’s limitations: the ever-so-subtle wavering of a line here and there.
The works of “Being” present Color Field Painting amended for our times. They are bold and beautiful via centering the paint over the painter. They also bear a disquieting undercurrent that is a watermark of our epoch. I cannot tell if this undercurrent flows from the dark space-age depths of certain hues, the intimidating size of some canvases, the flawless application of paint so uncannily steady it could have been computer generated. Or if this undercurrent is born purely from context: viewing these works in an era in which the lines dividing self-expression and reactionary behavior, morality and self-interest, and progress and extinction are blurred.
Perhaps it is a combination of the material and imagined that endows “Being” with its heft, which is the implicit message that there are different types of “sublime.” Some born from beauty and pleasure, others from weirdness and horror. While not all types of sublimes are happy, all deserve to be within our frame of view. Thus, the same can be said about being, the act of existing in today’s world. If we are to shed the outmoded, transcend the “noise,” reclaim our senses and grip on the human experience, we must keep the dark and unfathomable within view. Sanchez’s paintings help get us there, to that place of deeper, longer lasting gratification, one breathless moment at a time.