EBMA - Especially Blatant Modern Art

These works are very straightforward; each has a title that describes it exactly, without any particular embellishment or interpretation. Simple Pink Background is as straightforward as it gets; while the foreground of the work is a blank white, as is traditional, the background - known as such because of the thin black line that divides them, providing a sense of depth - is pink, with a consistent rough texture. A faint moire is visible across it, providing some level of interestingness. Big Ol' Pile of Junk has a clear foreground, mostly in black, and a background that is hectic and disorganized. Not that the foreground is not disorganized as well; while enough junk has fallen to the bottom of the pile to give it some hue, the bulk of the pile is scratches and outlines of the blobs that make it up. Fascinating Blandness is a bit self-deprecatory; its composition and color scheme are both fairly uninteresting, and yet the texture and contours make it fascinating in some small way. Deep under the surface, this work does have meaning, but that meaning is buried far enough to be quite inaccessible from the surface. Strikes of Various Colors is one of the more colorful works in this collection, and certainly the one with the greatest use of contrast between light and dark. The strikes themselves in the foreground run the gamut of colors from white to blue to red to magenta to even yellow, while blobs of light in the background are blue at one end and yellow at the other. The strikes, the lines, connect them, providing an active transition. My favorite work this week is Embers, a work that exemplifies the principle of elegance in simplicity. Against a pure black background, gray ash lit up by flecks of yellow and red embers is significant; it stands out, making itself unique and definite without being complicated or difficult to understand.