The Brooklyn Rail

Marcia Hafif: An Extended Gray Scale

Standing next to any two or three panels, it can be difficult to detect the subtle shifts in shade that the viewer knows are happening along 106 panels between black and white. Yet when we glance down a row of panels, the gradient appears seamless, as the work becomes a perspectival vector through the space. The experience is enveloping, meditative, curious—evoking a slow awareness rarely encountered in the twenty-first century.