They track perceptual paths or diagram trajectories through space and then take their places once again as incidents in the silt of dots, to read as punctuation, as accents, or as incipient, wholly metaphorical tears in the tenuously woven color fabric. The last is more evident in paintings where the veil of dots frays conspicuously at the edge of the canvas or the sheet of paper, revealing both the artifice of the tissue of accumulated touches and its inherent instability. The result, however, is not simply an assertion of surface and extension, but a pulsing declaration of intuitive logic, perhaps even of intuitive order. During the early stages, the formative principle is simply the vibration of the dots, whether in ordered constellations or randomly dispersed. Slowly, ways of reading the picture come up.
Areas press forward or drop back.
There are alternatives of substance and transparency. It all sounds simple. But even this unpretentious, hands-on description falls short of conveying the uncannily coexistent sensuous pleasure and intellectual challenge afforded by Forge's most achieved pictures. T he realities of the museum world being what they are, the exhibition is, of course, accompanied by words in the form of a modest catalogue with a short introduction by the artist, who also selected the works in the exhibition. Two essays follow.