There aren’t very many unvisited places in the world, if any. So also the artistic adventurer will sail off over the horizon full of hope and then light on well populated islands, or places where the first arrivals have left their a sign—enough to paint the atmosphere. But…we have an advantage over real world travelers that we can increase the sea. Stella’s sea is like the living ocean in Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris, swarming with forms.
Frank Stella, The Pequod Meets the Albatross (C-33 2X) 1990
But surrounding that sea is another one—a shapeless one—the ground of Stella’s assemblages, and the ground of art. Can that be brought in? It may be pointless to think so, but that’s what I try to do, as an image of the possibility. Only an image, because it can only happen as an image—those practices that claim to work directly on the social can’t do any more than that. So it’s a question of which appearance is most attractive. I love the idea that Stella’s metal reliefs are images of the ocean.