New York-based artist Julie Mehretu constructs densely layered abstract paintings that feature a wide range of ideas. Her large-scale creations offer a lot of patterns and visual movement for the viewer to soak in and process internally. Mehretu’s piece titled Middle Grey exemplifies the artist’s signature style of populating the frame with creative information in the form of brushstrokes.
The mixed media artist’s work incorporates architectural and geometric sketches in ink, in addition to strokes and smudges of acrylic paint. Once she’s done adding to the image, she then proceeds to sand down her multilayered image to create a smooth finish. Her time-consuming process results in an enormous and complex print with ideas that are both out in the open and hidden beneath other layers.
Gifs of Mehretu’s meticulous process were created from a video segment called “Systems” for the Art in the Twenty-First Century series, which can be view below.
via [art21]