Castle CCCXXXIII 15.7.01 2001

Curator: Standing before us is "Castle CCCXXXIII 15.7.01," an intriguing acrylic on paper artwork by Bob Law, created in 2001. What's your immediate reaction? Editor: Stark. Immediately, I see simplified form and bold colors. The red, yellow, and blue all neatly stacked and separated by fields of white and framed by a definitive border give the feeling of building blocks but simultaneously make me wonder if they are perhaps… bar graphs? It’s somehow comforting but also a bit unsettling, maybe in its refusal to mimic real form. Curator: Interesting you say that. Law's work is so interesting because of the title – evoking castles and grandeur – but the work seems so very stripped down to essential shapes. I love the contrast; what is a castle without its visual trappings? Perhaps these three bands, so methodically painted, are about essential shelter. He uses only flat color too – the lack of modulation intensifies this simplification. Editor: Absolutely. And castles have always held a lot of symbolic weight through cultural memory – the base is our fundamental needs and resources. Food, safety. Yellow is often the seat of consciousness, ego, the center for taking in information. And then a little antenna of the intellect stretches into the ether. Blue can symbolize that. So in some ways the abstraction almost heightens its meaning. Curator: The choice of paper as a ground is also noteworthy given the size of the overall "Castle". Paper is fragile, almost ephemeral; it heightens the fragility in his castle structure and perhaps hints at the illusion of safety found in grand fortifications. Editor: Precisely. Paper suggests vulnerability, transience. And the layering mimics memory—one thing stacked upon another to give substance, and elevation, even as it maintains its delicate quality. Bob Law is highlighting, for me, the symbolic and tenuous nature of what we build around ourselves – both physical and metaphysical. It's thought-provoking. Curator: It is, and there is an open invitation here too, for me anyway, to keep building, changing, adapting, perhaps by stacking up our own internal and external worlds like this to re-examine what a secure life looks like from a stripped-down point of view. Editor: A reminder to continuously build upon one’s foundation – maybe that’s a worthy takeaway. Thanks.