A square canvas holds two triangular zones, their shared diagonal edge running from upper right to lower left, and a third element: the dark red outline of a smaller triangle that sits at the upper right within the brighter blue zone, defining its own boundary without filling it. Deep blue occupies the bright upper half, fading to near-black in the lower left; the red outline glows against the blue with the precision of a detail that has been placed rather than found.
A square canvas holds two triangular zones, their shared diagonal edge running from upper right to lower left, and a third element: the dark red outline of a smaller triangle that sits at the upper right within the brighter blue zone, defining its own boundary without filling it. Deep blue occupies the bright upper half, fading to near-black in the lower left; the red outline glows against the blue with the precision of a detail that has been placed rather than found.
Canin’s approach here is related to, but less absolute than, Ellsworth Kelly’s pursuit of the single geometric form as an autonomous pictorial event, where shape and color were inseparable and the composition reducible to one proposition. The three elements in this square canvas are in relationship rather than isolation. The red outline, which defines a shape without filling it, introduces a question about the nature of the form itself: it is simultaneously a drawing within a painting and a color event within a color event.
The return to the square support in the early 1990s, after a decade of eccentric shaped canvases, is itself a compositional decision. The square holds the triangular structure in equal tension from all sides, making the diagonal the only vector and the two resulting zones equally weighted. The saturated blue and muted violet respond to that severity with a chromatic intensity that keeps the simplicity from becoming austerity.
