The space in between is where the work is made. It’s where the imagination and processing that go into making a piece happens. The space in between is the state of becoming. Over the years I have developed an inner dialogue with the work that directs what stays and what goes as the painting is built. In the making, the “yes and no” decisions come at a steady pace as instincts take over and I am inside the work. Chaos, and doubt have become my trusted companions as I work toward uncertain outcomes.

Each piece starts on the floor, going back and forth between the floor and the wall as it’s being made. When they’re hung on the wall, the painting work stops, and the looking, thinking, and analytic work begins, before finding their way to the floor again. This up and down process carries through until the painting is finished.

Damaged and weathered surfaces and architecture are recent inspirations that allow the work to reflect the processes of deconstruction and reconstruction in the world around me. There is a particularly strong connection to the immediate environment surrounding my studio. The stains, patina, grit, grime, graffiti, and detritus bring a particular kind of pathos into the work. Coupled with the physicality of their making, this feeling brings about an embodiment of time and gesture that makes each painting an expression of a life experienced. The new and the soft, the worn and the broken, the beaten, healed, and mended all merge to guide my work toward messy, abject, and beautiful remembrances.

– Judith Geichman

The paintings that make up The Floor, The Wall, The Space In-between bring about new vocabularies in the presentation of Geichman’s work. A massive canvas occupying the gallery’s largest wall is the result of making other paintings on top of it over the course of six years. What the viewer encounters is an astounding painting generated by the making of other paintings. Bodily presence manifests rather directly in another large piece, this one on her now signature use of Korean Hanji paper. It’s crumpled, metallic surfaces descend the wall and settle onto the floor—more of a heavy stomp than a gentle cascade of paper. Despite feeling perfectly at home amidst its aesthetic kin, the smallest painting in the show also seems to come form another world entirely. The strange qualities of this very dark but slightly reflective surface hardly settle even after you realize that what you’re looking at is stretched raincoat fabric that was painted on the reverse; a quintessential example of how Geichman allows herself to find each painting.

Geichman’s work is not for those who seek ease and simplicity from painting. It is for people who find painting to be full of possibility and want nothing more than to work for whatever rewards such possibilities might generate. Thankfully, there is no spoon-feeding in a Judith Geichman painting. You will be challenged and you will be destabilized, but you will also be loved and left with a sense of joyous bewilderment that perfectly reflects what Geichman has put into every single painting she has ever made.

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Tags: Chicago, Judith Geichman, Judith Geichman: The Floor, Regards, The Space In-between, The Wall, West Town