Sylvia Plimack Mangold: Tape, 1975–1986

Krakow Witkin Gallery presents an exhibition of Sylvia Plimack Mangold’s works made between 1975 and 1986 that incorporate imagery of tape. From paintings of the depiction of bits of tape “adhering” imagery of paper to the surface of real paper or canvas, to the representation of tape as a cropping and/or masking tool, the current show gives viewers a deep look into how the artist progressed in her thinking and execution over the course of a decade.

For works made prior to those on view, the artist often employed adhesive masking tape as a technical tool in her work. As she spent more time with the material, she appreciated and focused on certain of tape’s physical and psychological qualities including its translucency that selectively obscures and transforms underlying forms and colors, its role as a connector between surfaces and objects, and its ability to frame and draw attention to both a picture plane and its boundaries. This interest led Plimack Mangold to pursue incorporating tape into her finished pieces by creating imagery of masking tape within her works.

She painted, drew, and printed what appears as a painter’s traditional use of tape, to temporarily mask an edge in the process of making an image. In addition, Plimack Mangold explored how, while the imagery of tape being used for cropping an image gives a central focus, the tape itself was of interest. This highlighted the process of how an artist decides how and what to include and, in emphasizing the edge, subtly undermined the center-weighted focus of representational art.

In all of this, she used actual tape to aid in the creation of imagery of tape, by masking off areas to make sharp-edged, thicker layers of paint to simulate the material itself. Even while using this technique, she never gave in fully to verisimilitude. The means of making the image remain in constant tension with the result.