SANTA FE, NM.- Charlotte Jackson Fine Art is presenting a specially curated exhibition, Follow the Line presented in collaboration with the Tia Collection. The show runs through November 30, 2020.
The timing of this exhibition couldn’t really be more apt. Although art itself is timeless, able to offer us its own unique voice regardless of when it was created or when it is viewed – we are ourselves of course bound by time. We come through the door of a gallery or museum with the world trailing along behind us like streamers of chaos, concern, contentment, anxiety, and joy; with frenetic images and the blaring messages of our ever-present screens hovering always just nearby. We bring ourselves to quiet hallways and exhibition spaces and meet with the art there – forging an experience that is part now, part then, part art, part us.
Follow the Line is an exceptionally quiet exhibition. It is dominated by soft neutral tones of gray, beige, earth colors, white, and black and the small amounts of color that pop out here and there are muted and gentle. The titular line of this exhibition is omnipresent – from the black coil of Richard Serra’s July #17 to the insectile spikes of Alexander Calder’s La Botte; from the burnished stripes of Johnnie Winona Ross’ Bear’s Ears Seep to the dramatic bisecting lines of Max Cole’s Greek Cross XXXII.
Co-curated by Charlotte Jackson and Laura Finlay Smith of the Tia Collection, the exhibition includes an exclusive assembly of subtle and elegant works from the collection, with the addition of a small handful of pieces by Johnnie Winona Ross and Max Cole, who are represented by the gallery. Spanning time, style, and continents, the earliest works are two small glowing gelatin silver prints of contrasting geometric shapes by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Max Cole’s haunting Crucifixion (1962) and a Pablo Picasso portrait in oil, Busted’homme (1965) bring us to mid-twentieth century. Cy Twombly’s watery gouache Untitled (Ramification) from 1971 enters into a fascinating dialogue of horizontal and vertical with Bridget Riley’s 1976 gouache Light Grey with Small Twisted Curve.
The elusive lines of Johnnie Winona Ross’ Pass Creek Spring (with three small accompanying color studies) engage directly with the trio of Max Cole pieces across the gallery: color and line seeming to plait between them across the space. And finally, like the punctuation marks of the exhibition, the dynamism of the Calder sculpture’s irregular spikes seem to arc across the end of the gallery toward the muted gray-woven form of Ai Weiwei’s Bicycle Basket with Flowers (2014).
The Tia Collection of Santa Fe, NM was created with the exclusive intent to share an individual collector’s love for art across a variety of genres. As the collector has said - “At its heart, the Tia Collection is a global collection. It is a reflection of my travels and of my deep admiration for art of all genres and geographical origins. It is not a collection only for my appreciation — that would be far too confining. These are works that must be displayed for the world to see, admire, acknowledge, celebrate and are a testimony to the value of diverse cultures, histories and aesthetics.” The collection is curated and administered by Laura Finlay Smith who works closely with the collector whose focus includes artworks by contemporary Native American artists, historic Western American paintings and sculptures, as well as South East Asian, French Impressionist and Post-War/Modern and Contemporary masterworks.
This masterfully curated grouping of art works invites us to follow the line where it leads: to step through the chaos of daily life to hear what these works have to say to us. Whatever rages just outside the door, these works gently ease us into a moment of reflection, attention, and contemplation.
