Gloria Garfinkel

Flip & Turn

painted aluminum wall sculptures

Art is an evolving process for many artists. Ideas and materials we used in 1980 are different from the ones that we use today. Or are they?

In 1980 I did a series called "Shoe Boxes." These acrylic boxes had many themes, from the Holocaust to apartheid in Africa. Apart from the subject matter, they each had something else that connected them to each other; broken bits of mirror to catch your eye, to force you to look at yourself looking at the art.

Years later I did the "Secrets" paintings. These were oil and linen and each had two doors that you could open and perhaps become emotionally and mentally engaged with the artifacts within.

After "Secrets" came "Good & Evil," painted with acrylic on wood. These paintings also had a door to a cabinet, but this time there existed within a book of my photographs showing good and evil.

The materials in my oeuvre are different depending on the need to describe the subject matter.

• Acrylic boxes with related artifacts
• Doors in a painting with a personal collection of artifacts
• A box within a painting that holds a book of photographs

What they all have in common is that I'm trying to engage you. In this series "Flips & Turns" I want you to be fully, physically involved.

I find intriguing the concept that a finished painting is complete, done, frozen in time, never to be altered. I want you to move the "flips" and turn the "discs" to see how it feels to transform a piece of art and to feel the excitement of experimentation.

These paintings are abstract. You can make them anything.

G. Garfinkel

November 5, 2008