Amass: The Paintings of Linnéa Gabriella Spransy

Opening Reception and Dedication of The Earl & Virginia Green Art Gallery:

September 20, 2013  

Gallery opens at 6:00 PM, Program begins at 7:00 PM       

With Dana Gioia, Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture, USC and Howard & Roberta Ahmanson

Using strict rules, Spransy constructs images with the belief that limits have an eerie capacity to generate surprise…even freedom. Chaos and emergent system theory tell us that these limits need not be elaborate, or even obviously visible; in fact, it is often the most humble and self-evident limits, which, in time, behave in the most sophisticated ways. They form bizarre chandeliers of crystal, guide the catacomb construction of ant colonies, the spread of cities, and the swoop of flocks: all, too often, with eerie similarity. Awareness of these limits does not guarantee predictive power, or the ennui of omniscience. It is through this means that Spransy makes her work: every piece is the manifestation of a predetermined scheme – a system of small limits with a clear beginning and end. Using abstract symbol (what she calls ‘modules’, much like number and letter forms) in a mode of familiar, naturalistic construction, these pieces of visual script are allowed to accrue and to display their peculiar surprises. In this way, an unlikely path of discovery is opened in the mist of certainty – though every step is predetermined and although the end is known from the beginning, the final form remains enigmatic.