Space is the place

Donald Morgan’s collage-based works on paper in Space is the Place employ astute referential and compositional dynamics, deftly exploring a variety of textures, patterns, marks and spatial arrangements. These precise arrangements of paper fragments, rubbings, ruled and free hand lines often play out in sharply straight forward compositions. However, Morgan’s compositions also frequently misbehave via complex figure ground relationships that resist any immediate illusory grasp of the whole, inducing the viewer into a varied pace of looking throughout the exhibition. Each drawing is a highly tuned pictorial event, where geometry is adroitly rendered and wily shapes invite and resist recognition. A kind of knowing sensibility at once improvisational and calculated, simultaneously loose and rigorous, is evident throughout the work. Morgan’s influence from literature comes into play in certain drawings which respond compositionally to the formal structure of poems or short stories. Other drawings unfold along looser paths by reimagining artworks out in…