Artist Statement
(2007)

Abstract painting rarely, if ever, presents a world-view due to its extensive focus upon the substance of paint.  Despite the theoretical limitations of formalism, the vast plurality that dominates the realm of contemporary art continues to pose a challenge to the significance of painting.  In the face of such increasing trends, Ejay Weiss embraces this medium and reintroduces both himself and the viewer to the complexity of the painted picture plane that serves as a visual response to the outstanding transitions, which have occurred throughout the late twentieth and early twenty-first century.  The planar surface has historically showcased a phenomenal number of genres, such as Neo-Classicism, Impressionism and Cubism. Weiss explores the natural properties of paint in order to move the viewer beyond the historic, materialist object and into the realm of ocular illusion that evolves from a combination of theories which draw upon quantum physics, scientific logic and metaphysics.

Considered as a metaphor for the universe, Weiss reminds us that, “Painting as an action (verb) and an object (noun) occupies what we call the second dimension, which is basically flat, like a computer or movie screen.  Ideally it has height and width but exists only on the surface like a reflection in a mirror.”  His painting, “A Brief History of the XX Century,” (2000) features an array of colorful oval forms that spin both toward and away from each other while connected by strands of the same color.  Although this piece appears completely abstract, the vibrant representation of hues ranging from blue, green, orange and red, looks either like a square of coral reef that can be seen below the shallow surface of ocean water or an infra-red view of heat sources from colliding explosions.

By 2001 Weiss began using paint as a source to mediate between both color and depicted form.  “Bowl (Maximum Entropy #4),” (2001) and “Bowl (Maximum Entropy #5),”  (2001) capture an extensive cross-hatch pattern that creates the form of an empty vessel.  Lines converge, blur and condense into a unified shape before flowing away again into an object-less abstraction.  The suggestion of a unified field echoes even more strongly in a pieced titled, “In the Moment.” (2003)   Begun prior to 2001 but interrupted by the devastation of the terrorist attacks wrought upon New York City’s World Trade Center, this painting captures vertical and horizontal bands of yellow and blue that pass and cross through each other to create a tightly woven visual scope.  Much like Mark Rothko, Weiss gradually unites one color to another through the visual effect of iridescence, but he leaves each band narrow enough to reveal a full spectrum of color between each.

The swift change of global events that took place at the beginning of the 21st-century affected the artist profoundly, challenging his own views of humanity that had evolved up to that point.  “The Word Trade Center still reflects the world stage as a modern Tower of Babel,” Weiss notes, “and highlights the political ramifications of cause and effect.  The disaster not only involves a critical mass in terms of the laws of physics, it also presents us with a metaphorical view.  History is subject to the law of entropy, while geological forces and evolution, as biological destiny, establish the order of natural history.”  The subsequent collapse of the Twin Towers drastically changed everyone’s long-held notions surrounding our security.  “In physics, the collapse of a critical mass creates a black hole,” Weiss mentions.  “How does one rise up from that?” 

As the remnants of devastation smoldered, the artist was among those who walked down to the site and collected a handful of ashes.  He mixed them with some powdered black pigment he acquired from the studio of Mark Rothko (who committed suicide in 1970.)  Here, the artist establishes a double-entendre.  Over the course of a year, Weiss rapidly painted nine panels titled, “9-11 Elegy - Ghost City,” (2001-02) to memorialize those who died, along with the memory of everything that was lost on that day.  With each canvas an average size of 5-feet square, Weiss depicts this sudden collapse through a field of sky blue, which initially appears embedded within layers of black, white and red painted ground.  The last four canvases in this series capture hues  reminiscent of clear sky and suggest the start of a new beginning.  Although Weiss’ “Elegy”-series does not focus specifically on graphic figuration, it evokes Pablo Picasso’s painting “Guernica,” (1937) as both artists utilized the language of abstraction to state a literal wrenching within natural evolution.

In 2005 Weiss painted, “Evolution of Stones #7,” attempting to reconcile the energy of juxtaposing, physical forces into a single, unified field where he expands upon the spiral form that appeared in his earlier work. Here, the consistently stark contrasts, shapely curves and uninterrupted focus upon the center of the canvas generates an intense visual experience that begins to overwhelm the viewer.  “A painting,” the artist remarks, “can have an irregular fractal surface and still be regarded as relatively two-dimensional.  But it is the dimension that a painting does not occupy that lends it metaphysical significance in its capacity to exist out-of-time.”  As a step backward that is needed to go forward, “Evolutions of Stones #7,” captures a sense of the baroque while expressing it in terms of 21st-century parameters that include quantum physics.

This built-up pictorial tension begins to unravel in, “Nature Abhors a Vacuum,” (2006) at the time the artist realized that the laws governing movement within time could be extrapolated in to everything else.  A concrete, circular form seen in the upper left corner gives way to small, brisk strokes that build-up vigorously throughout a blue-green background, rendering the feeling of transcendental weightlessness.  Weiss’ process of layering paint along the vertical and horizontal axes is part of an elaborate study of the motion within paint before it settles and dries.  As a result the range of colors seen beneath the most outstanding brush marks is the result of a random and spontaneous process.

A total release of control appears in “Emergence #10,” (2006) and “Emergence #11,” (2006) which reflect the visual changing into the physical.  The artist claims that there is no specific order to experience a painting, which is in fact timeless:  “The paint medium constitutes substance, but has no form until the artist transforms it into something meaningful.  The paradoxical nature of the world is inherently contained in this process of painting.”  These two paintings in particular render small white marks that seem to move swiftly across the surface, establishing a universal order that fits harmoniously into our own.  “Emergence #12,” (2007) functions as a mid-point and consists of no forms emerging from the movement of colorful lines.  “Emergence #14,” (2007) however, returns to the process of transformation but on a vertical axis.

Ejay Weiss transforms complex ideas making them visibly concrete and elegant.   Weiss manages to make his paintings seem much larger than they actually are, creating an illusion of depth through volumes of space and color.  As of today, painting is not dead, but it suffers from an overuse of old styles.  At a time when new media and politically sensational art dominates much of contemporary culture, Weiss restores relevance to painting and turns it into a meditative site that articulates a series of tensions which reflect the visual energy of our own reactions to lived experience.  Similar to the early evolution of abstraction as seen in the work of Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso and George Braque, Ejay Weiss re-assesses the atmosphere of Western society while trying to understand the nature of complexity, chaos and order through his own reinvention of the picture-plane.