Untitled 1995

This "Untitled" work by Moshe Kupferman plays with teal and maroon marks, in what looks like pencil and paint. I can imagine Kupferman, maybe with a slightly anxious energy, trying to find order in chaos. See those lines? They're not just lines; they're traces of thought, decisions made and unmade. The stripes are so regular they seem to hold down the chaos of scribbles beneath, but then again, maybe the scribbles are holding the stripes together. There's a tension here I really feel – like a conversation between control and letting go. It's kind of like my own process in painting – that struggle to find some kind of balance between intention and accident. I wonder if he was listening to Agnes Martin? I bet he was. So many artists I know are! You know, we’re all just in the studio trying to figure it out and passing ideas back and forth across time.