Morales has also found inspiration through Spanish and Italian Mannerist and Renaissance art, with the development of her tondo paintings and in her arched works. Morales developed her first circular painting in 1986. She was seeking a new physical format which like her diptychs, could be conceptualized. As a circle, the tondo does this for Morales. In the painting Tondo NY98-1-1 (1998), there is no beginning and no end. It is a space in which to paint, but also unlike a rectangle or square formatted painting—and completely unlike a fresco or wall painting—it is not delineated by powerful right-angles or architecture. It is, in her words “a detail, or a moment” and suggests a space outside of itself, both formally and art-historically. The tondo, as a circular form, defies a linear or narrative reading. It is geometrically complete but can also be understood conceptually as a detail or fragment. However, through the painting and the imposition of marks and material—which for Morales are always bodily-angular, structural and temporal—that very contradiction feels held in tension. The tondo’s painted surface, and its structural format are therefore, for Morales, always in a shifting dialogue with each other.
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Tondo NY98-1-1, 1998, diameter 150 cm, pigments, metal powders and acrylic on canvas
