‘MY PICTURES TAKE TIME’: HAMMERSTEIN’S IMPROVISATIONAL TONES AT MILLER WHITE

To appreciate the beauty of life is to see it change over time. A sunset morphs from beginning — when the sun first starts to dip and the sky comes alight with mesmerizing hues — to end, as the sun finally lowers out of view and the sky becomes dark. In his artwork displayed in “Time and Space: Boundless,” at Miller White Fine Arts, Oscar Andrew Hammerstein sets out to capture every phase of life’s tantalizing moments all at once.

“My pictures take time,” said Hammerstein in a phone conversation. “That’s as close as I can describe it. I seem obsessed with time and space and trying to make one do the other.”

In his paintings, Hammerstein follows the modernist tradition with touches of futurism sprinkled throughout. In doing so he attempts — and succeeds at — distilling a series of moments into a static image. In his 2020 painting, “False Regret,” a haze of multi-colored circles that, like sequins, reflect light back toward the observer fade in and out of focus against a hazy, television static background of blues.

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