Locks Gallery is pleased to present Bright Objects, an exhibition of paintings and drawings by Edna Andrade (1917-2008) exploring her lifelong interest in revitalizing geometric forms through dynamic configurations. Throughout her career, Andrade worked between two-dimensional, graphical space and a mental world of abstract architecture. This exhibition brings together works that reveal a deep interest in hypothetical three-dimensional space pursued by the artist using geometric solids as building blocks within a whimsical, child-like space of abstraction.
The endless permutations and arrangements in her compositions reflect a pleasure in geometry that Andrade connects to her earliest memories of arranging colorful Montessori blocks and tiles into wide-ranging patterns of hexagons, triangles, and squares. Like her optical investigations that she is most known for—comprised of complex linear designs and pulsating color patterns that test the limits of perception—her work with three-dimensional mathematical objects takes perception further into the imagination into a landscape of the mind.
Bright Objects highlights works across different time periods of Andrade’s career, exemplifying the artist’s enduring and evolving interest in geometry over the course of her life. In Falling Cubes, a landmark painting from 1966, she utilizes a grid framework of rotated cubes set against a black background to create a quintessential, classical mid-century feel. Later collages from the 1990, such as Morning (1991) draw inspiration from her travels to Japan in 1987, and reflect a woodblock-inspired seascape with playful geometric structures in the foreground.
Central to the exhibition are works influenced by Andrade’s travels to India in 1984. Of particular interest was her visit to the Jantar Mantar observatory in Jaipur, Rajasthan, built in the 18th century. Comprised of a collection of architectural structures featuring astronomical instruments, the artist was compelled by the site’s use of geometry in creating a space designed to observe the cosmos and measure celestial systems. Paintings such as Deserted Place (1988) and Astrologer’s Garden (1987) exemplify the interplay of mathematical and celestial space through the use of geometric solids that evoke the observatory’s architecture. In other works, such as Philosopher’s Garden (1986), Andrade places these spheres and polyhedra atop a background of hexagonal star-patterns and linear designs drawn from Indian and Islamic tiles, carpets, and ornamentation.
