bruce wallin

NARRATIVE
Hemingway was quoted as saying that when he sat down to write each day he tried to make one true sentence. That idea resonated with me and has been something I have kept in mind as I go about the work of making Art. I try to make each piece as direct, and as clear as to what it’s about as possible. In generally characterizing my work I would begin by saying that I see it as being Reductivist rather than Minimalist in that the underpinning is one of reduced means rather something driven by theory. In the graphite work I’m interested in qualities of light and space, more specifically in the way light moves into shade as it arranges on a surface and of how space can be manipulated into a perceived fluctuation. I also like to provide a connection, sometimes clear and other times less so, to what we all have experienced in the world around us. I have worked on flat surfaces as well as shaped surfaces. In each the surface has been either paper or gesso. In all of the pieces I have applied graphite with the point of a pencil. I consider both the flat and shaped work to be drawings.
The Metal Sculpture generally follow the same Reductivist ideas that underpin the Graphite Work. The Wire pieces I see as drawings in space. the metal work in general gives a nod to Arte Povera. The other non wire pieces while more involved with the physicality of their materials still float in the same reductivist boat as the rest.