ARTIST SPOTLIGHT // CHERYL GOLDSLEGER'S TRAJECTORIES & TRACES

Cheryl Goldsleger returns to Philadelphia, order and chaos in tow

By Heather Shayne Blakeslee

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EXCERPT //

Goldsleger’s most recent paintings are part modern map and part mystic mandala—a starting point for viewers to ponder existential questions of fairness and fate and connectedness. She gives us a God’s-eye view that reads like an ancient text gifted to us by aliens, calming us with the sure hand of geometry and architectural form, and unmooring us with frenetic motion and the sheer scale of our modern existence. Layer upon layer of information forces us to look more closely at what it is that we’re viewing—is that a city grid? A subatomic particle? A topographical map? The grooves of a microchip? The points of a celestial constellation? The flight paths of a thousand planes? We see everything from above: Who—and where—are we? One more winking light in the firmament, or a creator of some kind looking at creation itself? I ask her about her process.

“Creating these paintings is actually very time-consuming,” she says. “The painting, Exodos, which is spelled to infer that these events are like a Greek tragedy—‘exodus’ normally doesn't have those two O’s in it—took me about a year and a half to paint. I work in layers. There is a lot of manipulation, painting and then removing layers to reveal earlier marks then adding paint again, and then working back into the surface. So I’m not fast. I wish I were!”

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