Page 9 - Art First: Dan Sturgis: Strict and Lax

history by being seen to embrace it. Ωat is part of the answerof Shine on me, and

of the other paint ings in this show. They are know-ing, a word Sturgis is happy
to use of them.

Ωe backgroundof Position and accordhas the same knowingly Op-ish check er -

board pattern as Shine on me; its central, stop-sign motif clearly borrows from
a di¹erent moment in the history of abstract painting, one that itself borrowed

from the graph ics of motorway signage. Sturgis’s stop-sign, though, seems
oddly mobile, tilted to one side and clipped at the edge as though it is about

to exit the canvas stage right. Rather than marking an historical end-point, it
questions whether such end-points exist. In the same way, the red-and-yellow [5 ]
circle implies perspectival depth by sitting in front of the check ered back -
ground behind it, pulling the viewer into the picture rather than barring the

way. What Sturgis calls the ‘florid motif’ on the picture’s left edge makes
a bow to its specific moment in abstraction not by shape but by palette.

Ωere is another history being worked out in Position and accord, though, and that

is its own. Ωroughout his career, Sturgis has painted in series—Stacked Paint -
ings, Boulder Paintings and Circle Paintings, of which Position and accordis one.
Fringed around the edge of the sticking-plaster shapes on its border are the little
Sturgis dots that have appeared in much of his work, which iden tify it as his.

Ωese seem oddly frail things to have found themselves caught up in an art-
historical battle, so much so that you occasionally fear for their safety. Like the
works in which they appear, though, the dots are more robust than they seem.