Math Bass is an artist who uses colour, geometry and flatness in a way that makes our little hearts soar. Looking at her work is like reading visual poetry, decoding the abstracted and ambiguous forms which skip playfully across her canvasses.
The Los Angeles based artist has been working at her instantly recognisable vernacular for a few years now, creating a library of sharp symbols which act as a visual language. Don’t think that you’ll get to the bottom of her message though, as she notes “the ambiguity of an object, its function and its purpose” is what drives and interests her in exploring her subject matter.
Math comes from a background in video and performance art, and in recent years has drifted to sculpture and painting. For her paintings, she uses gouache on canvas to create her hard-edged abstractions in large, flat planes of colour. Within her world of geometric shapes, we spy everyday objects like cigarettes, alligators and flowers resting beside zig zags, circles and soft gradients. Her sculptures are more reflective of bodies and people, suggesting their presence or lack thereof.
It’s very exciting stuff for the eyes to skip over, and we’re most enthralled by her surprisingly simple yet strong aesthetic that continues to pleasure and surprise.
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