ZANE FISCHER: Santa Fe Reporter: From Darkness: Light, Gunderson Pulls Visual Tactility From Pure Black: November 5, 2008

“Black is the color of objects that do not emit or reflect light in any part of the visible spectrum; they absorb all such frequencies of light. Mixing paints, inks or other pigments of all colors in theory eventually forms a mixture which absorbs all light and so appears black.”

I’m unable to attribute this assertion to an individual, as it comes from Wikipedia, the world’s self-defining phenomenon comprised of a morass of both authoritative and ridiculous texts. It is fairly redundant, however, with a consensus composed of a range of sources that try to define “black.” But talk of pigments that absorb all light is ridiculous when one stands in the vicinity of one of Karen Gunderson’s paintings. Done only in black oil paint on linen, these works not only manage to radiate light but to exert enormous amounts of volume and motion.

Gunderson’s work is part of a group exhibition called New Artists, New Work. An ambiguous and bland title, it must refer to the artists and their work being new to the gallery, since most of the artists, including Gunderson, have established careers. Additionally, a fair amount of the work is at least some years old. 

Relative to the pre-Columbian textiles in which the William Siegal Gallery specializes, however, new is a pretty flexible term. These ancient treasures and the gallery’s practice of interspersing them with contemporary work is a provocative and surprising experience. The chief risk, though, is living painters sometimes struggle to make work as fine, as undulant and as timelessly evocative as an Aymara textile.