Lacking in brush strokes, with a few exceptions gracefully minimal, Andrew Falkowski exhibits a kind of meticulously designed beauty in “Light/Industry/Coating.” The squares seem to be less of color than from color, immaculately applied prismatic fields so perfect in their lacquering as to be almost completely absent of texture, superannuated medium plucked from the industrious hands of pharaonic hieroglyphers and applied with industrial precision and mechanical grace—a flat, faultless plane broken only by the viewer’s reflection. By the overt insertion of humanity, our own imperfections become the work’s, the faults in the machine beget by us.
Andrew Falkowski. “Light/Industry/Coating” installation view at Paris London Hong Kong
The “Synechdoche” series, composed in part of the oranges and blacks of a construction site or employee safety sign, resemble a mass production run of Mondrian inspired works from Saul Bass, while his green and red arrows—looking practically screened on—could be lifted from the ever-smoothly rolling stock ticker of CNBC. While the massive “Synechdoche” paintings and their smaller siblings draw the eye first, it is with those flat-colored squares of cell cast acrylic sheet and antiquated milk paint—products of distant epochs conflated into one adroitly executed enterprise—that the true graceful beauty of “Light/Industry/Coating” lays, so flawless as to seem, on its surface, almost boring, the highest emotion precision can evoke. Falkowski’s simple brilliance brings the quiet perfection to voltaic life. (B. David Zarley)
Through October 18 at Paris London Hong Kong, 845 West Washington
