Pastine's painting hand is loose yet tidy, covering the sheet with repeated forms which range from thin, wavering lines to small, stenciled blots that resemble potato prints. There are links with mid-century art, from the minimalist grid loosely laid over one of Silent Treatment's (1999) two panels to the abstract, expressionist-influenced composition of a 1998 untitled work -- but I wouldn't make a simple equation out of this fact. Pastine's work draws as much from the vernacular culture of post-war America as from its art -- specifically, Kustom Kulture auto pinstriping, and kitchens and bathrooms.
The kitchens and bathrooms are the easiest to tease out. Pastine's colors tend toward pale pink, avocado green, sky blue, and bright yellow -- all colors associated with '60s refrigerators, ovens, sinks, and tiles. Her forms are similarly domestic: little heart shapes arranged in flower-petal-like groups of five in Silent Treatment and Flutter (1998), a budding tree branch form in Untitled (1996), and a curving, single line shape in the left panel of Untitled (1998) that resembles both a loose rubber band (seen as a line), and the sandpapery, flower-shaped stick-ons that keep you from slipping and bonking your head in the tub (seen as a solid).
The pinstriping reference is probably unintentional, but it's there in the sleek, thin line of her brush, in the curves of that line, in the shininess of her metal support. But it's a loose link: Pinstripers tend to take simple shapes or images and work them into baroque, vibrating, barely readable forms composed of many curving, crossing lines, while Pastine's complexity comes from overlapping simple shapes. It's two different sorts of blur. The common ground is found in a much larger tradition of decorative arts -- call it "more is more." Pure description and plainness are enemies of this tradition, which loves detail and richness.
Pastine's diptychs tend to contrast feminine and masculine forms. The aforementioned Silent Treatment has the little heart shapes next to a steel sheet covered in a grid of spindly lines, like country home stencil-shapes matched up with graph paper. But Pastine's grid is not strict: Formed of loose, slightly wavering lines, it brings to mind Agnes Martin's delicate, human -- and feminine -- minimalist drawings. Pastine's positioning is remarkable, poised at the intersection of two large art trends: feminized minimalism with no taste of brutal machismo, and minimalism which refers to the world outside of the hermetic discourse of art.
Which should lead me out of the art and into that world, I suppose, but it doesn't. This is not disappointing to me, though. Pastine's real-world referents are important to her art, but it's less fun to think about those connections than it is to simply revel in the beauty of the work.
Suspended Belief (1999) uses a thin-lined form looking like a closed eyelid or part of a radiant sun: a dipping horizontal curve with rays extending from its bottom. Pastine's hand is evident in these shapes, in the way the rays or eyelashes trail off from thicker beginnings. A second panel is covered in pale blue: the color of sky when your eyes are open, not the blood-red you see through closed eyelids. This painting also uses the mid-century domestic colors of her other work -- yellow, pink, light blue -- but feels more outdoorsy. Its references are less specific, which makes it more satisfying because you don't have to think about it as much. You can just let your open eyes glance over the icons representing closed eyes, or rest them on the cool blue of the painting's other half. Just beautiful.
