The blurred forms in Joanne Ungar's multi-layered encaustic paintings, invite us to imagine something we can mentally recall (a cityscape, a structure, a landscape, an aerial view). Ungar obscures her forms leading us to question whether they are emerging (becoming present) or receding (becoming absent). Her use of empty boxes illustrates that, for Ungar, absence (a lack of contents initially encased in her packaging) informs the intention of her work while its presence illuminates its beauty.

Cynthia Reynolds takes found and discarded packaging and transforms them by obsessively picking, peeling, and cutting them apart. Reynolds develops her forms by making areas of objects non-existent. She produces the embodiment of absence by creating work with a deliberately subtractive process. Her stark and elegant objects come into being through a deductive process that renders large areas absent. In Reynolds' work, presence is revealed through absence.

David X. Levine's gray works appear to be solid objects, yet upon closer inspection it is apparent that they are subtly varied hand colored drawings. As durational, meditative work, Levine's drawings are imbued with a powerful presence, yet convey a feeling of absence through their sheer ability to evoke emptiness. Absence and emptiness can have negative connotations - yet in meditation emptying of the mind is the goal. Levine's gray drawings seem like a celebration of nothingness.

Liz Jaff's work is based upon impermanence and permanence, perceptions of time, and the role of memory in shaping experience. Her paper works convey their presence with a monochromatic palette - declaring their existence with a solid, condensed composition. Jaff cuts into this solid composition to bring about a play of light and shadow. What becomes absence also becomes present as Jaff plays with our ideas about positive and negative space.

For Jeanne Heifetz, "An additive process I thought I understood accidentally turned subtractive, creating mysterious, dimensional forms far more compelling than what I’d originally intended." This work stems from her sense of loss after suddenly becoming a widow, which led her to investigations into the essence of grief, embracing both absence and presence. While the surface of these works is packed with well-defined indigo squares, there is no obvious place for the eye to land. In that invitation to enter the unknown, we are aware of the absence of something that goes far deeper than the surface of Heifetz's beautiful work. 

The use of implied lines in Anthony Amiewalan's drawings allow absence to create an illusion of presence, even if there are no continuous marks. The negative areas illuminate the existence of the drawn forms and become an object in and of itself. Because these absent lines become integral to our perception of an object or person, they are very present in viewing his beautifully executed drawings.

Each of the artists in The Presence of Absence explore the nature of absence and its interaction with presence and how that impacts our experiences and understanding. Absence is more than a trace of something in these works, it is information that we recognize as a necessary element to feel the presence of what is not.