Sylvan Lionni

Reflector (black) II, 2021

The combination of painting and photography, and the shadowy thematization of the artist’s studio all work to place Sylvan Lionni’s painting Reflector (black) II in the context of Marcel Duchamp’s work. Lionni pursues painting as a kind of mimetic readymade process. In a series of large-scale paintings entitled Reflector, he explores the meaning of the monochrome in contemporary painting, combining it with an extremely sophisticated use of photographic-painting techniques. The lower half of the painting consists of a photographed section of the studio, with chairs and ladder in front of a blank wall, covered in multiple layers of paint. Door-like in scale, window-like in format, and yet installed like a full-length mirror, Reflector (black) II translates the tradition of the black monochrome, as it began with Kazimir Malevich and shaped 20th-century art. Lionni’s painting closes itself off and at the same time opens itself to a reflection of the studio as a place of ideation, contemplation, and production.