Essay: Paul Yanko

HubAngleRay, 2006

Acrylic on canvas

20 x 20 in.

$ 1,100

PAUL YANKO

By Wim Roefs

Paul Yanko is an earnest and deliberate man, and it shows in his art. Whether his ink-on-paper pieces consisting mostly of line work, or his built-up, constructed canvas paintings of jagged, geometric bits and chunks, the works are intricate, tactile compositions of lines, shapes and colors. “The densely layered compositions reflect my desire to reconcile formal painterly concerns with an interest in process-derived imagery,” Yanko says. 

Yanko builds his canvas paintings like a puzzle. With his oil paintings, he uses cut-up canvasses or thick paint and a palette knife, creating carved-like surfaces. In his acrylic paintings, Yanko builds up the surface by taping off areas and then applying the next layer of paint one small area at a time. Heavily layered shapes protrude from the canvas, while physically, though not always in terms of color, the more modestly worked sections hang back a little. The results are dense, thick patterns with relief qualities. 

“I remain influenced by emblems of geometric abstraction,” Yanko says, “such as the stripe and triangle. As a configuration develops, I register successively smaller shapes over underlying rectilinear and geometric shapes. I set less active passages against heavily layered regions possessing a more tactile surface quality.”

“I extensively use primary and secondary hues arranged in complimentary color schemes to achieve maximum contrast. As a painting approaches completion, I use a tonal palette more to partially obscure large regions containing more intense hues.” The complex compositions show underlying shapes, revealing part of the process, of the search for the final form. “The overlapping shapes allow for a backward reading of the space,” Yanko says.

His extensive use of tape goes back to his days as a sign painter. Yanko likes the workman-like element of using tape, which is used by house and sign painters and in body shops. The intricacy of his work suits his temperament. “I like the longer-term engagement. There’s something reassuring in the sense of connection I get when parts of the painting are registering properly, when shapes interlock and fit into each other.”

Though the line compositions on paper are physically flatter than the paintings, they are as complex and involve much of the same process. “You layer marks, react and respond to decisions, edit, look where you need to embellish.” Yanko moved from the works on paper to the geometric canvases to explore more tactile surfaces.

“As a student, I was exposed to tactile painting, works that were in between painting and sculpture. I was always self-conscious as a student of being too concerned with illusion and not with the physical presence. So I made a pronounced decision to model paint.”