Mark Grotjahn’s Untitled (Violet and Canary Yellow Butterfly 43.78), 2012

Mark Grotjahn’s Untitled (Violet and Canary Yellow Butterfly 43.78), 2012 belongs to a series of large-scale paintings and drawings the artist began in 2001, investigating varying and multiple-point perspective and engaging vibrant color in new ways in each work in the series. The focal point here, as in his other series of “Perspective Drawings” serves as an anchor for work that is as much about process and chance as it is a careful study in abstraction. In an interview at the time of his 2010 exhibition at the Portland Art Museum, Grotjahn explained: “I changed the focal points because it changed the composition of the works and found that it was visually interesting and worthwhile… the only problems I was trying to solve were visual ones.” 

Often Grotjahn repeats forms within a series like Butterfly, working through similar shapes, perspectives and effects by employing different colors, often later exhibiting the works together. Their grand scale encompasses the viewer, occupying the whole visual field, something that critics have compared to the effect of Mark Rothko’s painting. The large-scale drawing on offer here, with its rich canary yellow and violet tones, reverberates in the viewer’s eye, creating a pulsating effect that draws the eye up and around and through, but also directly to the worked surface and its materiality. 

Born in 1968, Grotjahn studied at the University of Colorado at Boulder before completing his MFA at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1995, he was an artist-in-residence at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Madison, Maine. He moved to Los Angeles in 1996, opening an art gallery called Room 702 there with classmate Brent Petersen, an experience that gave him particular savvy into the art market. Though the gallery closed after only two years, it provided Grotjahn an opportunity to work closely with fellow artists and promote their work. Continuing his involvement in the art community in Los Angeles, he served as an artist trustee at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles from 2014 until February of this year. Mark Grotjahn’s work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.