-form

Hidde van Seggelen Gallery, London

2007

 

A group of works in acrylic and alkyd resin on abraded mild steel that, as one viewer phrased it, were 'almost impossible to see'. Hence to do justice to in photographs. Several images here are studio shots, rather than of the works when installed.

The works developed from a desire to bring overwhelming complexity, optical depth, and instability to a painterly space, frustrating documentation while also alluding to the uniform light and surface of electroluminescent screens. Grounded in a long fascination with how image-making technologies have shaped how humans think and act, it seemed a significant coincidence that the show fell a couple of months after the launch of the first smartphone. The iPhone ushered in a vast transformation in how images were produced and viewed, making the digital camera truly ubiquitous and the electronic display the unrivalled engine of pictorial representation, both together driving an accelerating and incessant flow of images. Conversely, containing in themselves an unfolding multiplicity of images, each painting asked the viewer to devote time to revealing latencies and exploring possibilities.