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“Although these paintings are non-objective and without figurative elements-they are not Minimalist. As she adds layers of [oil in high melt wax], Kerwin loads on stimulants to meaning. These are surfaces to dream on.”

—Marge Bulmer, “Barbara Kerwin: Dreaming of Rectangles,” Artscene, 2000-2001
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“I asked Barbara Kerwin what relation her works bear to the domestic spaces of modernist architecture, and she replied: I see them hanging on the white walls. She recognized that this was ambitious, even presumptuous, perhaps because that space is ‘left blank for a work expressing modern feeling.’ In order for the act to be the homage she aimed for, the painting would have to occupy that blank space with great humility. But the eye would be drawn to such paintings as hers, and feel the desire to dwell there. Mine would take pleasure in an ornamentation that, far from being humble, ironically reiterates on a smaller scale the larger structures of the architecture it honors….”

—Luke Carson, “What a Wall Is,” Catalog Essay: Dreaming of Rectangles, 2000-2001
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