Brent Wadden

Brent Wadden
Text by Mark Rappolt
 
To the casual observer, Brent Wadden’s woven paintings (how else to describe his trademark combination of woven wool, cotton and other fibres stretched over canvas) seem to articulate an often hypnotic geometry of form and colour. A work might feature a series of repeated triangles and rectangles (or horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines filled with colour); each iteration slightly different from the one next to it: the angles slightly altered; the colours deployed varying; a visible seam suggesting that this is a work made in parts, rather than a uniform whole. There’s the visual rhythm of a machine, but the disruptive trace of the handmade. Moreover, Wadden might call such a work 5 Green Bars (double fade) (2015); but you might see five orange triangles (those bars, for you, having receded into the background). A dialogue starts. Perhaps you feel that you’re part of an experiment in perceptual psychology. Perhaps you’re uncertain about what, exactly, you’re looking at.