Brooklyn Rail - Art Review - October 5, 2015
Chuck Close once said in an interview in the pages of this publication that “Painting [. . .] makes space where it doesn’t exist, but you relate to it through life experience.” If a viewer takes pause from looking at the new paintings on display in “Chuck Close: Red Yellow Blue” at Pace Gallery in order to observe her surroundings, she will note the insight of that remark. For along with everyone else present in the room, her body is participating in a dance. From far away one is compelled to examine the individual components that make up his current, abstracted portraits up close, yet in proximity it is jarring to find that the image has nearly disappeared before the eyes. Back and forth, back and forth across the gallery we waltz. Close’s work demands this physicality, as if the body, in its exercise, is unconsciously responding to the arduous labor that goes into each of the works.
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