ART PAPERS, January/Feburary 2008 ANNETTE CONE-SKELTON ATLANTA by Dana McClintock Random Order, Annette Cone-Skelton's methodically accidental installation, features one hundred ten-by-teninch panels [Kiang Gallery; November 30, 2007?January 5, 2008]. While it was intentionally conceived for the clean white space of Kiang's front gallery, the installation is not site-specific: circumscribing the room in a single line, its separate panels of identical dimensions could easily be reconfigured in a different space. The artist's obsession with materials and process connects her work with late 1960s formalism, and her self-conscious reliance on the systematic generation of chance configurations indexes early postmodern conceptual practices. For two decades Cone-Skelton has been investigating linear patterns within square formats. Each of Random Orders panels began with the application of a ground of Instant Rust?a thick, ugly paint-like compound infused with iron filings. Over the next twenty-four hours, the treated surface oxidizes, resulting in varied patterns of reddish-brown and bright orange rust, with the occasional greenish patina. Though she has worked with Instant Rust for more than five years, Cone-Skelton has very little control over the resulting oxidation patterns. To further remove herself from directing the work's evolution, Cone-Skelton placed each treated panel into one of fifteen boxes. Each day, as she completed additional panels, she shuffled the boxes. When they were full, she numbered them 1 through 15. Meanwhile, she began planning her randomly generated lines. Since there are four sides to each square, Cone-Skelton decided to allow between zero and three lines on each panel?four possibilities. Using a formula in Microsoft Excel, she generated a matrix of one hundred numbers between zero and three; then repeated the process to further generate random numbers four times. Using the fourth spreadsheet as her model, she began with the first panel from the first box, methodically applying the number of lines indicated in the first row of the first column. The application of line is the first instance in her deliberately accidental process where the artist allowed herself a bit of personal subjective choice. While the number of lines and their horizontal orientation were randomly pre-determined, Cone-Skelton decided on the length and location of each line in relation to others on the rust-covered ground. According to the artist, her decisions were based on the organically generated appearance of the ground. Then, prior to drawing each line with a thick graphite pencil, she erased the oxidized surface. The resulting series of square panels seems remarkably unified, despite the deliberate remove of the artist's intention from her process. Cone-Skelton had originally conceived of an arrangement similar to a calendar or a page in a journal, but eventually opted for a linear sequence in order to eliminate autobiographical associations. The rusted iron surfaces of Random Order evoke Song Dynasty literati landscape painting, New York School color field painting, or the tactile Cor-Ten steel surfaces of minimalist primary structures by Richard Serra or Tony Smith. And, like the minimalist work described by Donald Judd as "Specific Objects," this installation of small panels engages the gallery space and exists somewhere between painting and sculpture. Cone-Skelton's reliance on seriality and almost structuralist definition of her work as a determined system reinforce the devolution of creative authority to her process and materials. Simultaneously, however, her obsessive ordering and numbering deconstruct the logic of that very system, generating the randomness that produces the work itself.