Aislinn McNamara’s wall-mounted reliefs impose upon and invite the viewer into their vexing dimensionality. They emerge from bursts of activity, feeding off each other in groups. The process is habitually initiated by wood frames built or found by the artist, after which she bends metal tubing and wire to create armatures extending from and weaving through the base construction. She then stretches nylon tights and other fabrics to their limit, stitching through them and allowing the taut materials to bear pigmented gesso-as-sealant. This formal mode is akin to the production of a drum skin, as the splayed woven nylons require a specific manipulation that works with and against their inherent structure. At times surgical, using tights allows the artist to wrestle with volumes resemblant of bodily forms.

This way of working began in McNamara’s Los Angeles studio, where she saw the physicality of sculpture as grounds for shadow play. At this point too, she was reckoning with drawings that, though bound to the page, encouraged form. Drawing and sculpture remain parallel channels in her practice. McNamara approaches color from an opportunistic vantage point. She borrows palettes from the world, intuitively rearranging them to her liking. Lee Lozano’s “All Verbs” series stands out as a companion to McNamara’s production. The two artists share a strong sense of color application and formal composition, each bearing innate ties to industry and expanded minimalism.

McNamara’s reliefs are not explicitly about one thing, rather they play against the ideas of their creator. For instance, what might a scream, hiccup, or a sharp inhale look like in the third dimension? Thus, from a certain perspective, they articulate the auditory threshold. However, her foremost concern revolves around materiality. She drives the fabrics to exacerbation, incorporating tears and runs as active surface agents.

These objects ultimately speak for themselves. Still, they elide fixed meaning, allowing for the viewer to divest his or her own attachments in the act of beholding.

Reilly Davidson