Untitled

Jo Baer’s painting presents a monochromatic white rectangle framed by borders of black and violet. Deceptively simple, this composition, void of imagery, emphasizes not only painting’s primary tools and materials—brush, pigment, and support—but also the medium’s two-dimensional flatness. These elements are central to Baer’s austere and hard-edged language of minimalism.

While pared down in form, Baer’s paintings result from her sustained exploration into the nature of human vision. Here, the stark contrast of the black border is punctuated with a subtle jolt of violet. This optical effect causes the white area of the composition to recede in space. It also creates a visual “buzz,” an effect that Baer likens to the perceptual equivalent of auras. “I have always had the feeling that an object is larger than its outline,” she said, “that it has a field or force beyond itself.”