Tierce 

Editor: We're looking at "Tierce," an acrylic on canvas painting by Pierre Alechinsky. While the date is unavailable, I find the thick outlines and textured brushstrokes lend the artwork an energetic, almost frantic quality. How do you interpret the composition? Curator: Indeed. The visual arrangement presents several key formal strategies worthy of our attention. Note the employment of line. Observe the strong, almost brutal, outlining against the canvas. How does this application affect your reading of depth and space within the composition? Editor: It flattens the image, making it feel less like a window and more like an object in itself. It is hard to define if what we observe is an abstract composition or a collection of rudimentary figurative silhouettes outlined with stark black outlines. The negative space between objects is just as compelling. Curator: Precisely. And consider the deployment of color. The artist sets up a binary between the raw burgundy tones in the peripheral space versus the neutral canvas. Consider what this implies. Is Alechinsky making an assertion about form versus field, about interiority versus exteriority? Editor: It's as if the subject is intentionally raw, unfiltered. What about the texture itself? The acrylic seems applied quite gesturally. Curator: You have astutely identified another crucial aspect of the piece. Alechinsky has privileged the physical properties of his chosen media. The hand of the artist, if you will, is always apparent. There are intentional dripping paint which highlights its object-hood. It calls into question our conventional notions of illusionism. Editor: That's fascinating! I’d been so focused on deciphering a possible underlying subject, when the intention lies instead on appreciating Alechinsky's choices for form and material. Curator: Exactly. Often, meaning resides less in what is depicted, and more in how the depiction itself occurs. A close inspection of Alechinsky's technique helps to shed more light on how we receive the work, and thus perceive.