Lebanon 1968

Editor: Right, next up, we have Karl Kasten's linocut print, "Lebanon," created in 1968. The shapes feel very grounded and monumental. What’s interesting to you when you look at it? Curator: Monumental is a great word for it! Immediately, I'm struck by the duality - that organic, almost cellular cluster at the top playing against those hard geometric lines near what I see as the base. It makes me wonder if it is a landscape? Or an emotion made into visual language? There is an echo in the mark making between the cell cluster and what may be, well, anything really, but is in the lower right corner of the print. Tell me, is the echo just an echo to you, or does it strike you as more like a conversation? Editor: That’s an interesting way to put it, a conversation! Now that you point it out, it does seem like two separate elements responding to each other, like a dialogue. I hadn't noticed that the linework shared visual similarities, either. It has a lot of negative space, too, that really shapes how I interpret this piece. What do you think about the title itself? Curator: Oh, titles! They are just words sometimes but at others they open the door for my mind’s wanderings to explore a place or perhaps an emotional space, or at times… political space. "Lebanon" makes me think, considering its creation in 1968, could this be Kasten's meditation on conflict, growth, or even resilience within that landscape? Or is the title merely a coincidence, an unintentional red herring to distract us? The fun is, perhaps, we may never know for certain, but what we can see in this moment, can shift and shape. The organic abstraction juxtaposed against geometry lends itself to layers of interpretation, doesn't it? Editor: It really does. It's like the title is a starting point, not a fixed answer. I like your idea about resilience! Curator: That idea excites me, perhaps more because of this chat with you! Thanks! Editor: Absolutely! Thanks for chatting. I feel like I see so much more now.