This Garo Antreasian print is the Random Print of the Week.

The subtle, deliberate misalignments of desaturated dark grey-green, light burgundy, and burnt umber bars, each about 3/4 of an inch wide, cause one’s eyes to pause, creating tension where diagonals meet. The proximity of these color bars and their angular arrangement invites an optical illusion of seismic movement, like three tectonic layers sliding over each other.

The border of Antreasian’s composition conjures uneasy tension whenever possible:  chinks embedded in rectangles and squares, irregular cuts or diagonal terminations in places where we anticipate the color bars keep going, ultimately extending out of the picture plane. These breaks in visual sensibility keep the composition from becoming a window; they embrace the margins and the paper. Like a jazz composition, the work has an undeniable structure, a raison d’être. And the image’s perceptive dynamics develop as areas of controlled craftsmanship pushed toward unanticipated outcomes.

Another effect of these breaks is the separation of the squares and rectangles into discrete spaces, reinforcing borders or edges and creating direction so the image turns into a subtle architecture. Below is another of Antreasian’s prints from the same period, with colors peeled away to reveal a diagrammatic composition. Along with the stripped down version is another Antreasian lithograph that uses a similarly planned schematic, with solid colors in place of meticulously inked blend rolls.

~ Michael Glenn, 2014