In the Balance: Between Painting and Sculpture, 1965–1985

Dorothea Rockburne referred to works like Balance, with its stacked linen supports and translucent application of paint, as “wickedly balanced,” a description that underscores the ingenuity of the composition. The artist painted it during a period in the 1980s when she was working on an ongoing redefinition of perspective, aiming to “invent and experience a different pictorial space.” The painting’s support as well as the colors applied to it reflect the work’s title: the red triangular shapes, for example, both depict and construct visual geometry. The results further Rockburne’s project to achieve, as she wrote, “a differently conceived use of perspective: a painting that looked through its layers at itself.”