February, 2005

Julie Davidow - Artists' Statement

My work is based on the idea of the co-evolution of organisms and the survival of populations. Multiple environmental challenges conspire with a constant barrage of infectious agents to tax our biology, and pressure our evolutionary capabilities.

A sense of order is important to me. The use of a grid, or remnants of a grid system is purposefully infused into the ground during the folding process to organize the space. Directional lines referencing action, movement are also added at this point in the process. A limited, candy-colored palette maintains the overall minimal compositions, and distracts from the insidious nature of the content.

Since the beginnings of human investigation of cells and their morphology in the mid-1660s there has been a steady increase in the inquiry into their nature, physiology and, function. Julie Davidow has also been captured by this fascinating subject with her paintings and drawings, with an emphasis on infectious diseases. No, that doesn’t mean she is providing us with views of specific pathogens but they do provide her with a jumping off or, beginning point for her work.

Her surfaces begin in a folding grid process that is a mapping of sorts. The grid is, as we know, one of the foundational structures of the modern era. The grids however, are pushed into the background yet, still remain on the surface mapped out for the paint to reveal once applied. As her work has developed, this beginning process as a whole has changed as more complexity and a knowing about where she wants to take the works.

There is an incongruity in the relationship of the color palette to the idea of what comes to mind when thinking of infectious diseases. She is aware of that but wants to invite viewers into her mapped and painted spaces. She wants to trick us with the softness, the candy-like colors, and openness, much the way diseases attack the body.

She says her “diseases” are subtle but chronic, in their palette, approach, and the way they spread across the canvas or paper. In their viewing an interconnected network of tentacles ooze, seep, and grow across that surface.

Even though Davidow looks at (microscopic) slide of blood diseases, pathogens, and such, she has a sweet collection of natural artifacts in her studio made up of shells, exoskeletons (egg sacks from skates), and dried botanical forms. The patterns and shapes and textures are another part of her visualization of the microscopic.

However, any formal correspondences that do exist must be seen as areas of indiscernibility between biology and Davidow’s form of organic abstraction.

(images)