Ron Griffin: White Paintings

Los Angeles artist Ron Griffin’s abstract paintings aren’t actually abstractions, but the culmination of a process of meticulous representation of flattened, found paper objects. In his previous body of work, the “Black Paintings,” a few diaphanous white forms seemed to float on surfaces of highly polished black gesso. The sensuous, curving shapes were depictions of the crumpled and folded toilet-seat covers found in public restrooms. In his newest group of paintings he continues to explore the formal issues of tissue paper forms on a black ground. Now, however, he layers the depictions densely, creating modulated fields of translucent white and gray. References to Duchamp, Man Ray, Pollock and Ryman abound but the elegant work is trompe l’oeil Pop Art at its best.