In Shadow & Refraction, Naomi Schlinke’s current body of work, one finds images at once strange and familiar, hallucinatory and real. Through an emphasis on process and observation, the artist reveals the life of her materials and their inherent patterns as vocabulary. A paradox of intimacy and vastness, these worlds of organic chimeras oscillate on a sea of hypnotic white.

Schlinke’s work is about the sensuous and the contemplative, the beautiful and the provocative. Its primary appeal is to the imagination, where unstable images take on meaning, association, and even narrative. It finds its antecedents in the work of Chinese “flung ink” artists, as well as in the fluid manipulations of Abstract Expressionism, and the ecstatic uncertainties of Surrealism.

The artist’s process is deeply intuitive and spontaneous. Gravity and movement are the source of many of the forms. India Ink and clayboard undergo episodes of interaction and dynamic change. The surface then becomes one of infinite fractal detail. The relative passage of time is measured as some elements are abraded and washed down, while others are left whole and untouched. “Genetic” material is transferred when wet surfaces press into each other. Sliced fragments migrate, making new connections. Multiple panels combine, recombine, and finally fuse into an evocative syntactic order. Philosophically, the work hints at the structure connecting all of reality and suggests the state of flux of all living forms.