Noam Rappaport. Cusp

About

Residing in the territory between painting and sculpture, Noam Rappaport’s wall-based works on shaped canvases and panels display his continued engagement with process and composition, as well as a deepening consideration of psychological and symbolic themes. Though remaining in dialogue with its historical precedents, Rappaport’s work is underscored by distinctly hybrid sensibilities. The work manifests an elusive lyric ism, a chimerical quality resting in the space between intention and possibility.

Consisting of interlocking panels of varied depths, marked with color fields and winding, embossed lines, the works on display tread the line between image and object. Although they are seemingly concrete and self-contained, the works are suggestive of elements beyond their materiality. Three dimensional lines may suggest body parts, figures, serpents, horizons, and at times appear as a type of text to be read. Intersections, both painted and constructed, recur throughout and allude to concepts of connection, transition, ambiguity and hybridity. Yet despite its evocative nature, Rappaport’s work remains grounded in process and subtle, studied modulations of shape, line, and color.

Shape takes on an unfixed quality in Rappaport’s work, challenging the certainty of form. The painted reliefs suggest a slippage between image and object, requiring multiple vantage points when viewing the work. Rappaport neither conceals his artistic process nor wholly reveals it, and through this suspension of total understanding, encourages the viewer’s interactive relationship with the work.