Compound Editions is very pleased to announce the release of our third multiple, SQVENICEWATER08, by New York-based Scottish artist Rory Donaldson. Blending the languages of painting and photography, Donaldson creates stunning C-print images through a digital process that stretches out the original photograph’s four corners. The central image of each piece is identifiable only upon close inspection (see detail of SQVENICEWATER08 below). What greets the viewer from a distance looks to be large blocks of solid color, referencing perhaps color-field painting. As art critic John Haber recently put it:
“[Donaldson’s photographs] put color-field painting through its paces. Each divides neatly into four rectangles, in unnervingly close or contrasting colors. For a second, I mistook them for separate acrylic panels, but the effect is more striking once one engages them as photographs. Forget Ad Reinhardt, Clement Greenberg, and pure painting, they seem to boast, with just a bit of arrogance. This is what a new century’s technology can do.”
—John Haber, haberarts.com, May 27, 2008