ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT GOLD
48" x 48"
Mixed Media on Canvas
Becker's work is not abstract in any simple sense. Through the layered structure of her work, she establishes a dialectic between the abstract and the concrete (not the figurative - the concrete). The found objects, some gathered on her travels, are the most concrete elements in her work, not just records of the past but actual physical remnants of the particular moments at which they were gathered. As records of experience, the layers beneath the surface become progressively less concrete. Like memory traces that persist in immediate experience, they are present, but not fully available. The concreteness of the found objects throws into relief the spectral presence of these other images, and vice-versa. Even as the found elements seem all the more present when contrasted with trace images, their very concreteness also creates a desire to probe beneath the surface, to discover the implied realities and thus restore concreteness to them.
ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK
24" X 24"
Mixed Media on Board
With Becker's love of travel in mind, I liken some of her works to vista seen through airplane windows, landscapes far below glimpsed fleetingly through layers of clouds. Even though we see the land discontinuously, we know it is there, concretely present. Occasionally, specific details emerge to reassure us of the reality of the ground beneath.
ONE STEP FORWARD...TWO STEPS BACK
24" X 24"
Mixed Media on Canvas
In Becker's work, the concrete presence of found objects, the specificity of certain colors, the implied geometrics underlying her compositions - which sometimes rise to the surface in the form of particular geometric figures (circles, squares, grids) - all serve to establish the presence and reality of the experiences undergirding her compositions even when they are glimpsed, as if through clouds.
Philip Auslander
Philip Auslander is a frequent contributor to ArtForum, Art Papers, and other publications. He is a professor in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture of the Georgia Institute of Technology. His most recent book is Liveness: Performances in a Mediatized Culture, published by Routledge.
REMEMBER
36" x 36"
Mixed Media on Canvas
