Combining parts of different, though commonly recognized, natural and man-made structures, these works on paper allude to multiple interpretations as they oscillate among biological, mechanical, and architectural imagery. An assemblage of freshly cut forms, extracted from simultaneous ideas of organism, structure, and machine, hang pinned to the wall like a collection of specimens. The post-humanistic discussion of where natural forms stop and mechanical structures start is visually explored through these fluctuating pluralistic interpretations.

-- Dana Reifler, Artist Statement

Dana Reifler's long-term interest in organic forms and biological processes is evident in the images contained within her new work; there are also subtle references to the architecture and ground plans of the Greek city-state and the facture of Etruscan walls. These architectonic elements become a source of irony and conflict once our eyes pass beyond the almost classical, smooth assurance of her paint handling. Her elaboration of the Renaissance concept of a painting as a "window" onto the world into a freestanding architectural object unmasks the furious energy that underlies her artistic project. Like much of the best painting of the last 50 years, Reifler addresses the problem of how the framing edge engages the depicted image. In the hands of the founding abstract expressionists, Pollock, Kline and Rothko, the decentering of the image into an all-over state and the expansion of scale from easel to wall made the edge of the canvas almost perceptually invisible. Olitski and Noland called attention to the edge by laying down tripes of paint immediately adjacent to the borders of the canvas or by poking the boundary with the tip of a chevron. In Stella's minimalist phase, the shaped edge of the support actually generates the image through a kind of viral replication. In the written instructions for a Sol LeWitt wall drawing neither the edge nor the image have any claim upon our attention. But Reifler creates her edge with a power saw by cutting out her painted surface from a constructed wall; through its raw presence, a sort of three-dimensional scar, the edge becomes a rough beast in perpetual war with the depicted image. In place of painting as window, Reifler gives us the wall as painting. Whereas a Pollock or a Kline sits upon the wall, Reifler's new paintings are the wall and engage the space around them as both sculptural object and architectural fragment. The ethos of her work is grounded in the post-Minimalism of the 1970s, in such artistic strategies as Gordon Matta-Clark's sliced buildings and Eva Hesse's use of eccentric materials. Reifler's objects bear only a superficial resemblance to a Rauschenberg combine; they are not three-dimensional collages and they are not arbitrary or chance-built in their conjunctions. In Reifler, the edge is in violent combat with a generally more serene image, moreover the painting has an internal life, one that is revealed by looking inside its exposed edge. The literal and simultaneous deconstruction of painting, sculpture and architecture by means of tape, plasterboard and dry wall is very much of the moment, espcially in German-speaking countries (e.g. Thomas Hirschhorn, Gregor Schneider, and Reifler's near-contemporary Felix Schramm); that she is of her time does nothing to diminish Reifler's accomplishment. She has managed to step into the gap between art and life without succumbing to such pervasive influences as late pop, with its childish connection to fashion, or the many epigones of Richter's photo-derived post-modernism. She has retired these tired topes and, free of irony, has recuperated the energy of an authentically hand-worked surface.

-- Dr. Michael Salcman, November 2006

Michael Salcman is a physican, brain scientist and essayist on the visual arts. Former chairman of neurosurgery at the University of Maryland, he served as Presidnet of the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore. His peems have appeared in Raritan, Harvard Review, Barrow Street, Notre Dame Review, Atlanta Review, Poet Lore. His most recent book of poetry is The Clock Made of Confetti.