"I've always worked under the notion that the world around me is unknowable . . . and through the gradual distribution of marks and modulation of color . . . and process - scraping and dragging - I can distill something concrete from something transient."

-Brian Rutenberg


Some reflection on Rutenberg's videos, centered compositions, and frames:

Ripples billowing inward (as alternating levels of intensity - empty and full, empty and full...) from outside in the surrounding space to the center of an ordered frame of reference. The same ripples are simultaneously billowing outward. Rhythms are frozen in a painting, therefore this paradox can occur. The viewer is being pulled through, into the deep. In the deep you are further away from yourself and closer toward the center of everything. The painting lets you inside and lets you out, billowing in one frozen moment over the course of many.