Terry Haggerty

Two Minds (2009)

As its title, Two Minds (2009), suggests, Terry Haggerty’s painting is conflicted. On one hand, it presents a system that fuses crisp visual punch with consistent, all-over evenness. On the other, it insists that the quirks provided by unexpected interruptions make art and life both interesting and unpredictable, at once puzzling and fun.

It is impossible to look at Haggerty’s mural without your eyes instantly gliding along its wavy bands of color. From one end to the other, we visually travel speedily along the candy canecolored curves – as if on a rollercoaster ride. Brightly striped awnings come to mind, as do banners flapping in the wind, garments in Baroque paintings, and 1960s Op Art.

Haggerty’s painting creates the illusion of three-dimensional space by suggesting that some sections recede into the distance and disappear behind other sections. The mind’s eye fills in what is not visible, creating a coherent image. And this is where the London-born, Berlin-based artist throws a monkeywrench into the system.

It is physically impossible for the red and white stripes to curve up and over the “fold” or the “bump” in the upper middle part of the painting. There is simply no way for the stripes to be continuous, unbroken bands. But that is what the mind’s eye wants to see and what our eyes tell us, when carried away by the painting’s visual momentum. And that is exactly what Haggerty wants – a glitch in the system that allows us to be of two minds.