Jennifer Bartlett: From Rhapsody to Song, 2008
Text by David Moos
54 pages, Softcover
Published by Locks Art Publications
ISBN: 978-1-879173-53-8
This illustrated catalog features an essay by David Moos, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Published on the occasion of the debut of Jennifer Bartlett's new monumental work, Song. The piece spans 97 feet and is comprised of three sizes of enameled metal plates, arranged in a repeated, stepped grid. Song creates a panorama reminiscent of Bartlett's epic plate piece, Rhapsody (1975-76). In Song, Bartlett uses a basic black dot as a springboard to explore various compositional themes, employing the dot like notes in a melody. In his text, David Moos notes the strength of Bartlett's work in that it takes "narrative leaps that are figurative and associative, while operating in real space to activate and affect physical presence." The catalog also features study drawings for Rhapsody - now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art - as well as early plate pieces from the 1970s. Bartlett is known for her installations of enameled steel plates that blend conceptualism with painterly form. It is the work from this era that established the artist's visual vocabulary of grids, dots, and pattern, as it does a pictoral home, executed with exacting precision.
