Annette Davidek’s paintings are derived from diagrams of plants, organic life forms as well as old technological illustrations. These sometimes quirky, repetitive images randomly mutate. Some shapes flatten, darken and become almost silhouettes. Florescent splays of color emerge from behind the flattened darker images. At times the images are almost translucent, similar to a light-soaked field seen in a microscope. Distinctions blur. Opacity and luminosity, repulsion and attraction, and tension and dissonance are concerns of the artist. Ghosted images vie with more clearly seen parts of her paintings. The captured, submerged and frozen images create a sense of depth and a record of her process.
Davidek’s paintings of floating forms look “like” so many things– roots, branches, coral, chromosomes, capillaries, atoms, algae. Her imagery’s ambiguous scale generates a micro and macroscopic interplay. Despite countless organic references, they remain abstract shapes repeated throughout the painted space as if suspended in solution. The artist creates surprising depth with extremely thin layers of paint, so thin that the wood appears stained. Her compositions seem as though they have been suddenly flooded with light to reveal the animated forms within.
Davidek’s paintings personify processes of movement and growth in action as well as shape. Her syrupy lines often bleed, or dissolve, into the wood, and this fuzziness becomes a pictorial equivalent to energy. She employs repetition for a fundamental and formal purpose: mimicking the replication of development and the dynamic of movement.
Annette Davidek has been represented by Littlejohn Contemporary since 1995.
www.artinfo.com/galleryguide/18957/5515/6191/littlejohn-contemporary-new-york/artist/annette-davidek/biography/
