Arousing the Mind - Paintings, Drawings and Prints: Jane Haslem Gallery, Washington, DC

Arousing the Mind is comprised of two very different kinds of recent work - on two floors - hard-edged abstract oil paintings, and expressionist graffiti-esque digital pigment prints.  Many observers have commented on the "upstairs/downstairs" nature of the show:  Some have wondered aloud how the same person could do both kinds of work.

The "downstairs" part of the show is a series of ten digital pigment prints that one viewer has called "visual intertextuality."  The title of this series, Arousing the Mind, is a quote from Leonardo da Vinci in one of the prints, Free Association. The images are in rich color and look alternatively like watercolor, graphite, pastel, photography, and ink. The texts in the prints range from James Joyce, Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson, and Freud to the Bible, Virginia Woolf, and Jacques Derrida.  Images in the prints include a Giacometti sculpture, a fragment from a Leonardo notebook in one print, a photograph of the sea and a tiny portrait of Anne Frank.   I can send you, by e-mail,  a "crib sheet" that lists the quotes in each print, and PDF of the 10 prints (try the PDF download from the site).   

One can view these prints as “pictures of thinking,” as if the strands of text are neurons in the brain, and the spaces between them synapses.  The viewer’s thought, like a neurotransmitter firing across the synaptic gap, connects the two strands.  This is the act of understanding, or interpretation.

These prints were made in 2003-4 in collaboration with David Adamson at David Adamson Editions, Washington, DC, one of the great digital printmakers today.  We have used cutting edge digital pigment technology, which yields unparalleled digital resolution and longevity.  The results are intense color saturation and textural detail.

The prints are meant to be read as well as seen.  They should cohere as a visual experience for someone who can't read the languages in the prints or for someone who chooses not to read them.  Since Picasso, what artist hasn't played with words in an image?  These digital pigment prints bring the visual experience of perceiving an image and the visual experience of reading into an almost jarring confrontation.  Showing them on a separate floor from, but in the same exhibit with the abstract geometric paintings, has enhanced, I think, the experience of both.  They both use the principle of juxtaposition - the paintings juxtapose shapes of color, the prints lines of text.

Eric Gibson, reviewing an exhibit of the artist's  paintings at the Jane Haslem Gallery in 1991 for The Washington Times, wrote:   "These are singularly beautiful abstract works. Some of this has to do with Miss Seligson's capable handling of both color and design.  And her handling of paint has a lushness to it that mitigates the regularity and severity of her imagery."