"The recent paintings of Mark Grotjahn retain and renew the tradition and potential of abstract painting."
Bursting from the center of the canvas with an illusory kaleidoscope of depth and color, Untitled (Full Color Butterfly 819) from 2009 is a resplendent exemplar from Mark Grotjahn’s celebrated series of Butterfly drawings. The central vertical axis in the present work delineates the butterfly’s spine, from which seemingly infinite spectrums of radial vectors cascade outwards to establish the dynamic trajectories of its rainbow wings, fluttering in monumental grandeur. Summoning natural phenomena while investigating the fundamental tenets of Renaissance perspectival exercises and geometric abstraction, Grotjahn achieves a sublime result that is as aesthetically seductive as it is rigorously analytical, creating a parallel pictorial and conceptual universe in which abstraction and representational painting seamlessly collide. Untitled (Full Color Butterfly 819) is an immersive visual spectacle that engulfs the viewer in the hypnotic patterns of its prismatic matrix, unfolding with Grotjahn’s contemporary thesis on the illusion of depth and perspective on a two-dimensional surface.
Traditionally a symbol of metamorphosis and transformation, in Untitled (Full Color Butterfly 819 the body of the butterfly becomes abstracted into a central vanishing point) from which streams of color beam outwards through the diagonal lines of its wings. The radial bands of pure color here possess a seductive inner voice, fluttering, converging and pulsating with an energy that draws the viewer into its kaleidoscopic hold and refuses to let go. Meanwhile, slight interruptions bisect the form of the butterfly, creating a sense of visual tension in the overall image. Deliberating upon the compelling effects of Grotjahn’s Butterfly paintings, the curator Gary Garrels explained: "the experience of looking at an abstract painting is distinct to the medium and form. It is a slow experience, apart from the relentless movement of contemporary life. It is an experience that remains remote for many because it is not like that which is more quotidian, more familiar... The recent paintings of Mark Grotjahn retain and renew the tradition and potential of abstract painting." (Gary Garrels, “Within Blue”, Parkett 80, New York 2007, p. 117)
With the vertical body of his Butterfly Paintings anchoring the center of the composition and the vectors radiating like starbursts, Grotjahn discovered a graphic framework that would become his most sustained visual investigation. The variegated wing motifs in Untitled (Full Color Butterfly 819) connect in equilibrium along a perspectival axis, despite the kaleidoscopic tonal shifts therein that Grotjahn achieves through a methodical and highly systematic approach: the artist selects a variety of colored pencils that pair together in terms of both depth and intensity, but then, choosing a color randomly, he works methodically from left to right and top to bottom to apply densely laid pencil marks that ultimately form opaque planar segments. To construct the composition, Grotjahn continuously adds diaristic layers of marks and color, many of which are completely obscured within the meticulous network of lines once the larger drawing is complete. Meanwhile, soft pastels juxtapose vibrant primaries in Untitled (Full Color Butterfly 819), resulting in a palimpsest of colored pencil marks and a symphony of hues that sings with a harmony to express Grotjahn’s keen understanding of color theory, abstraction and perspective.
"[The Butterfly works] announce themselves with a powerful physical and optical presence […] but still more powerful is this something else that can’t quite be seen, can’t quite be felt, though one can’t help but sense that it’s there, hovering, somewhere behind the painting.”
In its mesmerizing optical illusion, Untitled (Full Color Butterfly 819) complicates the formal correlation between the symbolic winged insect and a purely geometric organization of shapes, operating in the fruitful polemic between abstraction and figuration. Taut with formal rigor yet charged with expressive bravado, Grotjahn’s Butterfly paintings interrogate traditional notions of perspective, form, geometry and symmetry this way; the series engages with influences as diverse as the spatial illusions of Op Art, the social utopianism of Constructivism, and the avant-garde radicalism of analytical Cubism, all while maintaining an allegiance to traditional representative form. Grotjahn’s Butterfly works are seminal in his acclaimed career, paving the way for his subsequent landmark series of Face paintings in which representational features began to emerge from the maelstrom of seemingly abstract configurations. Just like the ensuing Face paintings, critic Barry Schwabsky asserts that Grotjahn’s Butterfly paintings such as Untitled (Full Color Butterfly 819) revel in the perceptual aura effected by their chromatic alterations: “[The Butterfly works] announce themselves with a powerful physical and optical presence […] but still more powerful is this something else that can’t quite be seen, can’t quite be felt, though one can’t help but sense that it’s there, hovering, somewhere behind the painting.” (Barry Schwabsky, ‘Vehicles of Fascination’, in: Exh. Cat., Aspen Art Museum, Mark Grotjahn, 2012, p. 62)
