The figure/ground duality is basic to the act of seeing and to the act of drawing. Starting with a blank sheet of paper, the artist puts down any sort of mark, and one’s eye immediately reads it as a figure (of something or someone) against a space, the one defining the other. The degree of abstraction or specificity is dependent on the nature of the mark-one line made in one stroke can be quite representational or suggest little more than itself-and on the perception of the viewer. The artists in this exhibition, culled solely from the Kentler’s flat files, toy with the viewer’s perceptual expectation of a figure/ground distinction when looking at flat art, or they explore completely the idea of surface/support. Some tease out the ambiguity that lies in between, in works that hover somewhere near pattern but are, on the other hand, not repeatable.

Participating artists: Ernst Benkert, Hovey Brock, Stephanie Brody-Lederman, Phillip Chen, Richard Howe, James Jack, Ellen Kahn, Jiri Kornatovsky, David Lantow, Janell O1Rourke, Sherae Rimpsey, Susan Schwalb, Robert Schwinger, Elaine Smollin, Alicia Wargo, Martin Zet

Curator Carter Foster will give a talk June 10, 4 pm