The powerful ambiguities of Rachel Friedberg's works are apparent throughout her career. Many of the signs, emblems, and themes that appear in the "White Paintings" have played a role in previous works. For example, the theme of balance that is the subject of A Fragile Balance, Balancing Act, and Age of Innocence, can be traced back to the image of a young girl on a well-trained pony balancing on a series of lines in the 1981 photocollage Red Stockings. Indeed, in the earlier work the relation to Goya's "Foolish Precision" is more obvious than in the later, more reduced versions. Simpler elements, like the chair or the bicycle, have appeared before in different contexts, as have the armless, androgynous figures, falling, lying or leaning in space. The "White Paintings" of 1997, then, are the culmination of a life's work. In their precision of formal articulation and their refusal to restrict meaning to any single narrative enunciation, their insistence on letting the images evoke and suggest, drawing deeply on the fundamental processes of memory and desire, the "White Paintings" call forth our most provocative responses.