PAUL SIETSEMA : ABSTRACT COMPOSITION

Film by Eric Minh Swenson. Matthew Marks is pleased to announce an exhibition by Paul Sietsema in his galleries at 1062 North Orange Grove and 7818 Santa Monica Boulevard. The artist’s first one-person exhibition in Los Angeles since 2002, it includes two recent films and a group of new paintings and drawings. Sietsema conceived the exhibition around the color green as an aesthetic and speculative framework. The two films in the exhibition explore the mechanisms of circulation and the experience of apprehending an image through text — both examples of a medium distancing an object from the viewer. For Abstract composition, a black and white film projected here in 35mm, Sietsema has taken phrases from online auction sites (“English hunting scene,” “painted waterfall,” “carved marble urn”) and, using digital animation, punched the words into a cardboard sign that appears to rotate slowly, like a coin flipping between heads and tails. Paul Sietsema (born 1968) lives and works in Los Angeles.