GARY GARRELS: In this gallery there are a group of very closely related works, all from a series called The Grove Group. There are five paintings altogether in the series.
BRICE MARDEN: You know, after working with certain ideas for a certain amount of time, I like to sort of sum it up. And what I did with this group was I used all the permutations I was using for arranging the panels in my paintings. So there’s a single panel. There are two paintings that are divided in half, one vertically, one horizontally, and then the other two are divided horizontally and vertically into three parts.
I was going to Greece and I was using ideas about olive groves as the color ideas for these paintings.
GARY GARRELS: The painting that’s divided into two horizontal panels, I read very much as a landscape. Maybe it’s sea and the sky meeting.
BRICE MARDEN: Well, I didn’t want it to read too much as a landscape, because you have one horizontal line. So how do you make it a more complex visual situation?
The relation of the top panel to the bottom panel, that was the real working basis. I worked the strokes very vertically, which tend to flatten the painting, to have it be two flat panels with paint on them, and yet at the same time, have it go way, way beyond.
GLENN LOWRY: You can see five drawings relating to The Grove Group in the Drawings Galleries on the third floor.