CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 12/22/2020

Abstraction, collage and autobiography in 'McArthur Binion: DNA'

"DNA:Study:Zero" (2014, courtesy The Joyner/Giuffrida Collection) is reproduced from staff favorite new release, McArthur Binion: DNA, published by DelMonico Books. Collecting the artist's minimalist DNA paintings collaged over copies of personal documents and photographs, this volume explores the series through the lenses of art history, labor, music and writing. "Part of the satisfaction of engaging with the DNA series derives from the kinship the works have with musical improvisation," Grace Deveney writes. "The subtleties and quiet variations of the visual tactile pleasure they offer necessarily exceed the language created to describe them because of their dynamic relationship between rigid structures and free play. This pleasure also derives from the possibility that there is something in these works that defies expectations about the very nature of repetition and the practice of everyday life. The result feels directly related to the outcomes of improvisation in jazz and experimental music, or the new grammars of poetry that are touchstones for Binion. When the artist arrives at the studio to add to the DNA series, he cocreates with the past—the network of contacts from his address book, his familial origins evoked by his birth certificate, and finally, with the limits of his hand and the forms and materials he has engaged with since the 1970s. The DNA series gestures to both the internal facets of each painting, as well as the world beyond the studio."