Monika Grzymala: COLOURS

For her show at the Locker Plant, Monika Grzymala used tape, paint, and an assortment of dead trees she collected around Marfa. The trees, leafless and stark, reminded the artist of drawings; incorporating them into a show allowed her to expand her method of drawing in space. The trees were broken up and placed in a kind of semi-circle occupying most of in the Locker Plant’s front room. At the back of the room, unpainted tree fragments were lashed densely together with brownish or “tree-colored” tape. To the east, they were painted a range of pale greys, browns, and silvers, and assembled more loosely with similarly-colored tape. Starting in the room’s center and moving to the west, the branches became more and more brightly hued. This room-wide movement through color reached a crescendo with the branches rearing up against the front window to the west: here, on both tree limbs and tape, was a range of super-saturated yellows, oranges, pinks, purples, blues, and greens. Scattered on the floor were small scraps of colored paper—Grzymala’s “leaves.” Their color trajectory generally corresponded to the one visible in the trees, but the palette was more mixed, and visitor movements and random breezes caused the colors to keep on mixing. This gave the installation a sense of transitoriness, of flux. Though built of dead trees, Grzymala’s arboretum changed on a daily basis.

Monika Grzymala: COLOURS
Chinati Foundation artist in residence
Site specific installation at the Locker Plant, East Oak Street Marfa TX 79843