Zig Zag
deliberations in construction, sequence and colour
10th
June – 2nd July 2011
Private View: 9th June 6-9pm
Andrew Bick
Vanessa Jackson
Jost Münster
Marta Marce
Isha Bøhling
Patrick Howlett
Julian Wakelin
Katrina Blannin
This exhibition brings together artists who are working today to produce new work that consciously furthers and develops the relatively short history of abstract painting. Using geometric shapes as essential elements, systems or through referencing architecture, pattern or structures in furniture and surface design, the artists here explore the formal: the effectiveness of colour and tone and their own experience of composition and arrangement in order to realise something that works aesthetically: a balance of symmetry and asymmetry: something striving towards harmony.
Isha Bøhling
These artists have developed an understanding for the possibility of an
‘internal logic’ in their work; an idea which artists such
as Mary and Kenneth Martin talked about in their teaching in the 1950s,
as well as explore ideas of ‘colour interaction’ and ‘colour
juxtaposition’.
In her essay, ‘The Writings of Mary Martin’ 1990, Hilary Lane
discusses Mary Martin’s idea that all ‘words’ or information
needed to describe the artworks should be embedded in the work itself;
that written language cannot always express or explain the processes and
decisions made during their construction. Mary Martin wanted the story
of how her work was made to be clear to the person when looking at it.
And although proportion, rhythm and measurement were key she wanted to
emphasise the unexpected and a need to remain inventive. Of the process
of construction itself Martin wrote that it is: ‘a thinking making
process, not necessarily in three dimensions. Internal logic is the key.
The success of such a process is wholly dependent on a right choice of
symbols. The choice is based on intuition and experience.’
Katrina Blannin
Moving away from, and yet referencing, the idealism of exhibitions such as ‘This is Tomorrow’, Whitechapel Art Gallery 1956, and the constructed art movement of the 50s and 60s, which set out to bring together artists and architects in an attempt to bridge the two disciplines and blur boundaries, abstract painters may have different or new connections to today’s contemporary architecture. However, the work here recognises or is still part of those new disciplines and paths in abstract painting, which developed and flourished in Europe in the early part of the 20th century in the De Stijl and Constructivism movements, schools like the Bauhaus and the original 1950s London Group in Britain.
Andrew Bick
The work in this show examines how artists are still discovering new visual ideas, through the complex and technically challenging process of applying paint and other materials onto a ‘blank canvas’. It is hoped that through the process of contrasting and comparing an opportunity is provided for debate and discussion with regard to visual language: a small critical forum for artists and audience to consider these works and the concepts, methods or systems behind their construction.
