In this exhibition of a recently completed suite of lithographs made at Tamarind, Jensen finds another literary means for articulating his color-geometries. The suite of 20 prints is entitled “The Pythagorean Notebook,” and is based on ancient mystical-mathematical formulas for architecture. The numerical systems are written out on the lithographs themselves and then illustrated using the artist’s own familiar vocabulary of geometric shapes and colors. Most of these are highly attractive, but the demand for an intellectual response to the extra-visual material makes for an incomplete confrontation. Unlike his paintings, which offer an interesting solution to the problem of combining literature with a formal, non-allusive imagery, these seem to function as little more than interesting and attractive attempts at the explication of his methods and general themes.
––Don Factor
