The way Alicia McCarthy works, there is a controlled and celebrated chaos to the actual tightness of her compositions. It’s a ying and a yang. There is a sustained practice at hand and the openess for chance, something a good abstract painter lets occur in the studio. For her newest exhibition at Jack Hanley, it seems like we need this confrontation between this meditative labyrinth of ideas at the moment. The potential of destruction with the possibility of perfect bliss.Â
A few years ago, McCarthy told Juxtapoz about her work, “It is what it is. That’s what I like about it. And I have to accept certain parts. That really drives me nuts. But again, I think that’s part of life. I always see one or two lines that really just irritate me, as the bad mood or the thing I shouldn’t have said. You just have to move on, no regrets. The neat thing is it’s just one line and as the piece grows, it gets lost in all the other ones. So again, there’s that metaphor. I learn things about being out in the world from the work.” The kind of imperfection that needs to be addressed. —Evan Pricco
