They don’t really look black,
at least not completely
(they also appear to contain
browns, blues, whites and reds).
Confronted with these paintings,
the viewer has to reconsider
her assumptions about monochromatism,
about what we mean by that word
and what it may in fact be covering up.
Recalling that black is considered a color
only when we’re talking about pigments
and coloring agents,
this series could be described
as an exercise in aesthetic materialism
whose true subject is paint.