‘Life has moved on’

“Canone aureo 958” (Agnes Martin) (“Golden ratio 958’’ [Agnes Martin]; detail), (acrylic on canvas), by Georgio Griffa, in his show “Paths in the Forest,’’ at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass., through Oct. 12.

The museum says:

“Impersonal marks that belong to any hand, with thousands of years of memory” are Griffa’s subject; he follows and blurs the lines of drawing, counting, and writing. Griffa ‘interrupts’ his paintings before they are finished because, ‘in the meantime, life has moved on,’ an idea he credits to Zen Buddhism. Like the artist himself, each work remains vital: ‘Leaving the work incomplete means symbolically omitting that final point, which, like the period at the end of this sentence, fixes it in the past.”’