Cool Topics

With strong orthogonal lines, primary colors, and an idiosyncratic approach, Cool Topics represents some of the strongest aspects of Rommel’s practice. Known for creating works in various scales that defy the traditions of paint on stretched canvas, in recent years the artist painted both sides of a work, stretching, folding, then refolding and restretching the canvas as she continued to layer paint over it in precisely delineated fields. The result defies easy logic. What looks as though it may have been hazily applied, thinned-down paint on the work’s surface turns out instead to be thickly painted layers on its verso that have seeped through to the front. Similarly, lines that may read as drawn or painted have actually been produced through the act of pleating and folding the canvas as Rommel works on top of it. References to recent art history also abound: to the primary colors and geometries of Mondrian, the harlequin costumes in early Picasso, or the act of folding and refolding in the work of Dorothea Rockburne. While Rommel’s practice keeps the viewer guessing about how the work was made, she draws attention to the importance of the artist’s process.