Josephine Halvorson | Steam Donkey Valve, 2011, Oil on linen, 18” x 23”, © Josephine Halvorson; Courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York
Josephine Halvorson | Tregardock, 2011, Oil on linen, 19” x 15”, © Josephine Halvorson; Courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York
It's obvious Halvorson spent time with these sad characters — the empty, unidentifiably red-orange hued Sign Holders and the pristine (or never used?) Grippers, angling out menacingly at the viewer like Eva Hesse's early Tools. It is her modus operandi to execute the works on site, spontaneously, whether that means Shoshone, Califormia or Shoreham, England. Halvorson's interest in a physical and psychological relationship to a painting in progress, coupled with its relationship to where it was conceived, have been axioms of her practice since her post-undergraduate Fulbright Fellowship in Vienna. Just picture Halvorson sitting down, crouching perhaps, regarding Generator or Tregardock as she builds up their respective textures in layered oil paint. I looked up "Tregardock" and only found the titular coastal settlement in north Cornwall, United Kingdom, but Halvorson's rendering looks like a screen-less window or an unevenly empty picture frame (channelling Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte?), opening to a void of crackling blue-gray plastic. Tregardock's foregrounded nail snaps the composition into sharp relief. Meanwhile Generator looks a bit like an early Brice Marden monochrome locked behind a bright-red metal gate. It's one thing to see artwork references "everywhere", but it's notable they recur here in the most "normal" of subjects.
