From fire to earth

Judd Tully

Francisca Sutil’s easel is a vacuum form table; a relatively recent advance in handmade paper making that frees the artist from some of the laborious tasks associated with the craft.

Excess water from her palette of colored pulp is suctioned out, speeding up the drying process of the tailored paper forms. “What used to take me three days with sponges”, explained Sutil, “now takes fifteen minutes with the vacuum table”.

Sutil’s ‘painting’ technique brings to mind the balletic solos of the Abstract Expressionists, notably Jackson Pollock’s all-over fusillades of paint, executed on the floor and attacked from all sides. With the vacuum table, Sutil can manipulate her abstract compositions in a highly charged and spontaneous assault. The artist compares the approach to painting with watercolor –one mistake and that’s it. So a palpable tension exists as pails of colored pulp –from earthy browns and greens to extraterrestrial reds and sunburst yellows– await the hand of the artist. Traditional modes of brushes and canvas are jettisoned for a sensual, barehanded dip into the pulp.

The untitled works are made up of collaged forms. Shaped territories of color and texture push and pull for attention. An uneasy truce prevails. A spear shaped form suffused with a mustard hue skims the pebbly surface of a two-toned rectangle. A diagonal shard of red at the top end of the vertical spear plows the underlying turf. The rectangular path is submissive and low-keyed.

The transformation of the pulp from a consistency resembling wet kleenex to a richly textured and sturdy surface stamps the work with an alchemic aura. With its organic foundation the geometric forms abandon their formal edges and loosen up.

If grounded in another media, comparisons could be made with Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist compositions of Josef Albers’ Spartan color fields. Sutil escapes most minimalist labeling with her pulpy cauldron spiked with alfalfa and dill seeds and even an occasional banana skin.

A particular form has evolved in the recent work; a shape that moves and flips around like a porpoise in sea water. With a pointy snout and serrated edges, the shape changes color with a chamelion’s fickleness. From a dark turquoise to lava red and then a sultry black, the tongue of color hones in on the rectangle and touches down with quivering excitement.

In one composition the black form –call it a slender surfboard or Brancusi-like hull of a racing skiff– stretches out from the top right hand corner of the rectangular collage to the bottom left hand side. The north and the south tips kiss the edges of the underlying sheet in breathless diagonal. Three horizontal waves of muted color rock the skiff. A great patch of gray consumes the center, sandwiched between a rusty brown at the bottom and an eye-squinting shade of yellow at the top. The sensation of looking through a window and simultaneously feeling the warmth of light darts in and out as you move in front of the image.

The artist’s Latin American roots –Sutil comes from Chile–surface with her passion for the textiles of the Andes, the brocaded and embroidered woolen tapestries that dazzle with design and color. Sutil weaves another type of tapestry but her fibers are meant for a different kind of altar. They celebrate the land and sea and often the geological struggle between arid and fertile land.

Always encroaching the other’s boundary, the lushy moist color confronts a parched and bleached out one.
But it is not a one dimensional approach. The music and magic of the mountains, the ancient cultural stamp mingles with contemporary influences. Kenneth Noland is one such icon, a master of color and form. Noland too is an accomplished paper maker and experimenter. His horizontal stripe series from 1978 and batch of bullseye circles complement Sutil’s concerns. The sculptor, Bryan Hunt, also comes to mind. His Ancient Mariner (1980) of wood and silk paper with gold leaf segues into Sutil’s vocabulary. Hunt’s streamlined ellipse breathes the same air as the pointed forms of Sutil.

A subtle demarcation line divides the work from 1983 and 1984 auguring a change of season. The earlier work revolves in isolated space as pure geometric shapes carved by the artist’s hand. Colors leap out in hot hues. Blacks and reds collide. The emblematic forms pulsate.

Fleshy pinks and cobalt blues rush in and out as if controlled by the moon. Enter the vacuum form table and the collaged elements thrust out and then retreat onto a background of rectangles. The concept of Kurt Schwitters’ ‘Merz’ art (“a chance scrap of paper, oddments picked up here and there”) enters the work. Schwitters’ Forms in Space from 1920 and Merz Picture with Yellow Block from 1926 inhabit Sutil’s pantheon. The new palette is radically re-mixed (note the hand of the chemist), eliminating some of the higher keyed colors for a quieter and more contemplative range. The horizontal-vertical contrasts and changes in pitch return but the base is earthier and more mature. Sutil’s collaged paper paintings caress the eye with landscape elements.

The Quixotic turns of nature haunt the work, placing the forms in adversary postures. The rhythm of the forms also mimes the emotional states of the artist. Surges of optimism are derailed by flashes of self-doubt. Obstacles appear and the artist mulls the situation. Brash expressionism has toned down in pitch and more graceful lines appear. Fire sign succumbs to that of earth.

Francisca Sutil: Recent Handmade Paper Paintings
Nohra Haime Gallery, New York
December, 1984