Chinese Cliché 1976

Charles Garabedian made *Chinese Cliché* with what looks like watercolour and pencil. I love the way he’s laid down these boxy forms in grids. It’s like architecture, or maybe piles of building blocks. Garabedian is playing, experimenting. You get the feeling that there’s no fixed goal; artmaking, for him, is about movement and change. The surface is flat, like a child’s painting. The colours are translucent, watery. Up close, you can see the grain of the paper coming through the thin washes. In the middle is this weird, almost cartoon-like shape hovering in a pink haze. Is it a portal, a mirage? The lines wobble. Look at the brown strokes that describe the ‘ground’. They’re wonky. I bet he didn’t use a ruler, just went with the flow. Garabedian reminds me of Forrest Bess, another outsider artist who mixed personal mythology with intuitive mark-making. Both artists remind us that art isn’t about answers, but about asking questions.