Geoff Tuck reviews the recent exhibition Mary Weatherford: Bakersfield Paintings at LAXART.

Tuck writes: "Mary Weatherford’s Bakersfield paintings are about place, and about landscape as experiences of specific places… I don’t think the neon has to do with Dan Flavin’s fluorescent tubes (which feel more overtly political and idea-based), or with any exhumation of Light and Space sensibilities; I think that the box-like transformers and the electrical cords depict the overlay of industry on the landscape of Bakersfield, the light from the neon reminds me of electrical lighting in the city, and of old neon signs and also of the light from the sun, changing at different times in the day." He continues, remarking that these works are "not about painting, but of paint and about the things an artist can do with it. The ideas that Mary Weatherford’s paintings communicate derive from their very materiality, and from the physical things they represent, and not from any position they take."