Grid - Artist examination

   

Ellen Gallagher uses the grid in a multitude of ways in her work.  Her creative process could begin when she constructs wooden lattices, which she uses simply as a tool that allows her to sit over the canvas and work on top of it.  In some of her paintings, she has glued down penmanship paper to the surface.  She uses this familiar structure to access gesture--whether it be the gesture of handwriting, revisions, or something else entirely.  Also, she has used images from magazine advertisements, revised to fit into her lexicon, and then arranged in the grid format.  Her reasoning for using the grid in this way is in attempt to give the viewer a more spatial experience of the painting rather than a sequential one.  In other works, she uses the full size of advertisement rather than a clipped image, which plays with the way we read the painting.  Taking the grid even further, Gallagher has even explored using film as an investigation of this idea.  She sees the film as being a grid projected in space where you can only see one module at a time.  Each section disappearing as the next appears. 

Jennifer Bartlett uses the grid, in some ways, similar to how Ellen Gallagher does.  Bartlett implements the grid not for aesthetic purposes, but as a method of organization.  The grid becomes a structure where rules are created.  This could result in a complex mathematical exploration or a more narrative representation of a house or a mountain.  The grid is such an integral part of her creative process that it allows her to work in both the realm of representation and abstraction.  

Mark Bradford, however, uses the grid to create an index of an urban environment.  The structure presents itself as a method of organizing this information, just as the artists above took advantage of the grid.  Taking advertisement posters found around the city, he collages and sands into them to alter their appearance, although always bringing back the text.  Text is another aspect of Bradford's work that falls seamlessly in line with the framework of the grid.  Some of his larger paintings resemble maps and make use of an abstracted representation of the grid.