R. H. Quaytman, “חקק, Chapter 29”

Quaytman doesn't see her conceptual paintings as singular compositions but as parts of an overall scheme detailing the arc of her career—a "book in which each successive show is a chapter.” The works here are part of a series originally mounted at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, one revolving around Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus (1920), located in the museum’s collection. In it, Klee pasted a monoprint over a 16th-century engraving of a figure in a black robe—an image all but obscured by the collage. Quaytman set out to discover the identity of this hidden figure, subjecting Klee's piece to X-rays and other tests. In a process that took two years, the artist attempted to solve what was, essentially, a 95-year-old art-historical murder mystery—an investigation that became the grist for these paintings.