“The column paintings emerged at the time I was making paintings with massive quarter-round frames in the early seventies. I pictured two of the giant four-by-four-inch quarter-round frames coming together to make a half-round column. This new invention gave me opportunities to delve more deeply into my concerns with perception and the relationship of viewer to object.”
The column painting shape came from Mr. Torreano's need to challenge such modernist dogma as essentialism, that painting must be "flat" or that paintings were "containers" of meaning. His use of the column shape coincided with an interest in the Big Bang theory in the early 70's. The Universe was an expanding shape of space defined by objects such as stars, planets, galaxies, black holes, etc. The column, an essentially phallic shape, physically intrudes into the space of the viewer. With 180-degree access every viewer's position in the room presents an equally valued point-of-view. The marks, whether jewels, wood balls or paint, offer the possibility of an internal illusion of space. Both phallic and vaginal the columns can be looked at as well as looked into.
The simultaneity of the object and the illusion provides an alternate way for meaning as there now exists the possibility for a transactional relationship between the viewer and the object. As the viewer moves, in relation to the column, the gems wink to remind the viewer of their specificity in space. Combined, the gems, balls and paint give access to an internal experience.
There is no hierarchical point-of-view. These paintings do not "contain” meaning. Rather they emphasize a viewer's particular experience both externally and internally. Each viewer becomes the author. And, as Torreano would say, “There are many stars. There are many gods”.
