THE Magazine - Hanging Panels
ERIC TILLINGHAST: COLORED PANELS
By Jan E. Adlmann
THE Magazine – June 2007
It is rare, in reading or writing on Minimalism, that the soul ever enters into the discourse. Minimalism can flower into some fairly exotic forms, as is borne out by the enameled steel panels recently created by Eric Tillinghast. This viewer, gliding from one to another of these works given over to color orchestration (by virtue of their modest scale, color “tone poems” may best describe their effect), couldn’t help but to recollect something that Kandinsky said about color harmonies: “Color Harmony” ultimately rests on “purposive playing on the human soul.”
Each of Tillinghast’s discreet panels does indeed play on the soul, since each composition has clearly been the result of exquisite decision-making as to the effect certain combinations and certain proportions will call forth for the viewer. Kandinsky, a non-objectivist, paradoxically described this kind of musicality in color in the most subjective of ways: “ the artist is the hand that plays… color is the keyboard… the soul is the piano with many strings.”
To summon a wide variety of different emotional vibrations, Tillinghast painstakingly considers not merely the selection of colors used in each piece (matte, non-reflective enamels) but, most critically, the combinations he proposes and the precise amount of retinal play he allots to each color in any given work. What is further ingratiating about each of these exquisite essays is the very subtle sensation we get of witnessing vibrating, shifting planes; in some instances, we think we see one plane blending with another to form a third color.
The artist has called this new series of works “color constructions” and, indeed, any viewer could be forgiven for assuming that they are fabricated from nothing more than colored construction paper. Tillinghast intentionally eschews the sort of automotive sheen-enameled steel that might invite him to the point where the works would have an almost playful insubstantiality. The range of color combinations is remarkable, with some works reductive in the extreme (white on white, blue and white) and others leaping out in riotous color. Some panels – like the one in canary, hot pink, orange and royal blue – suggest a hot and tropical, downright “carioca” sensibility, while others in brown, orange, and yellow, work in a meditative mode. Perhaps the most accessible aspect of these handsome works has to have been their modest pricing. At $1,600 each, a single purchase could be the cornerstone of a beginner’s (or a connoisseur’s) collection.
