Chris Ashley’s December calendar of html drawings, now showing (and growing) at the online Marjorie Wood Gallery reminds me of the post-modern advent that my stepfather did when my brother & I were kids, buying us little presents, blank journals and wind-up frogs, each package with its own “open on” date.
Chris’s mastery of optic effects with light and dark shades and contrasting colors often make his “drawings” feel like sculpture, with the appearance not just of depth but of curving surfaces, and even, to my eye, movement. As I mentioned at the time to Chris, many of his early html works made me imagine that I heard music, and now, as I flip through the first week’s images in a pop-up browser and they seem like one being changing its forms, the synesthetic effect is back. I’m hearing low, simple tones, like striking a large copper pipe with a rubber mallet.
In an essay that accompanies the exhibit, George Lawson writes, “Ashley’s HTML images are to canvases as emails are to handwritten letters, ephemeral but profoundly convenient. What digital correspondence lacks as perfumed, autograph, keepsake, it makes up for in its immediacy, and the same holds true for Ashley’s art.”