Bram Bogart At White Cube, Mason's Yard, London

Bram Bogart, 'Binche', Mixed Media, 1984

I found myself down in London, with my friend, Susie, recently, and managed to fit in a visit to White Cube's Mason's Yard enclave - where the work of Bram Bogart is currently on show.  Dutch-born, and Belgian by adoption - Bogart is an artist I only discovered last Summer, at the end of another long day of gallery-going in London.  Although tired, and about to depart for home, I found myself pausing for a minute or two before one of his heavily-built monochrome paintings in a room of similarly all-white works at Tate Modern (you know I can't resist a white painting).  There was enough in it to make me want to know more, and it's fortuitous that the chance should come around so soon.

'Bram Bogart', White Cube, Mason's Yard, London, February 2020

Bram Bogart, 'Blanc De Brabant', Mixed Media, 1977

Bram Bogart, 'Briques Blanches', Mixed Media, 1992 (Detail Below)

Bogart seems to fit into a loose affiliation of abstract artists, along with Robert Ryman, or certain American Minimalists, who sought to investigate the very limits of what a painting might actually be, in material (and philosophical) terms, in the post-Abstract Expressionist period.  It's a mode of work which could, I suppose, represent that outdated idea of 'the end of painting', or at very least - a logical culmination of high Modernism, in the Greenbergian sense.  Certainly, Bogart's mature work, in which 'paint' is so heavily built as to really resemble a construction material, could be said to exist at the point where painting crosses over into sculpture - and in which the behaviour and formal organisation of material is the only real subject.

Bram Bogart, 'Windzand', Mixed Media, 1963

Bram Bogart 'La Ferme', Mixed Media, 1978 (Detail Below)

Bram Bogart 'Donker En Grijs', Mixed Media, 1962

Of course, events have long-since discredited that old, Avant-Garde notion of linear, mono-directional progress towards some kind of artistic singularity.  Painting resolutely refused to die as a means of expression, and the kind of extreme abstraction that Bogart's work represents, has duly slid in and out of fashion in order for that to occur.  What we must now recognise is that this kind of stuff is really just one of the myriad things that painting can do - and thus, no more or less valid than any other.  If it represents a limit of some kind, it's surely a border we can enjoy crossing and recrossing as the mood takes us - rather than being one we must traverse only once, never to look back.

'Bram Bogart', White Cube, Mason's Yard, London, February 2020

Bram Bogart, 'Printemps Neerlandais', Mixed Media, 1959

Bram Bogart, 'Linaabelina', Mixed Media, 1960

Actually, the other artist that most readily came to mind as I browsed with pleasure amongst the Bogarts, is Antoni Tapies.  The Spaniard is renowned for his resolute exploration of the ways that base materials (often handled in a singularly crude manner), might be transmuted into something with an almost spiritual resonance.  He often spoke of his practice in terms of alchemy, or with a philosophical gravitas verging on the mystical.  But, whatever else it may or may not have signified - much of Tapies artistic vision originated in the walls and rugged masonry found in the Gothic Quarter of his native Barcelona.

Bram Bogart 'Yello Jubel', Mixed Media, 1980 (Detail Below)

I'm not sure you can necessarily equate Bogart's work with the solemn profundities of Tapies' immense oeuvre, and there is a sometimes a candy-coloured playfulness about the former, that is completely lacking in the latter.  But there is, I think, a similar relish for the physicality of material, and a desire to explore its intrinsic qualities and transformative potential.  It seems no coincidence that the Dutchman started out as that other (and equally noble) kind of painter - a painter and decorator.  Whether articulated or not, such an apprehension is surely intrinsic to that particular trade.

Bram Bogart, 'Rondwit', Mixed Media, 1975

By mixing his pigments with oil, cement, plaster, and other similar ingredients, Bogart was able to concoct self-coloured pastes of such density that the effects of weight and gravity become key factors. in the appearance of a given piece.  Indeed, one of the primary themes of all these works is what happens when an extremely viscous liquid becomes a solid.  Even more specifically - they seem to catalogue exactly how much a material might sag or spread, or how much a churned or tooled surface might finally settle and pucker, as that extended moment unfurls.
  

Bram Bogart, 'Cristal Baroque', Mixed Media, 1959

In that respect, the paintings contain the history of their own making in the most direct and substantial manner possible.  They are both process and action-driven.  It's certainly true that they may chart a certain art-historical moment when pictorial composition was most reductive, or when a form of pictorial architecture aimed above all, to emphasise the physical extent of the picture plane as object.  But more urgently, they reach toward something far more primal, and yet simultaneously timeless.  They are really memorials to what happens when you get down there in the mud, and squeeze, spread or simply chuck it around in great big dollops.  And that never goes out of fashion.

Bram Bogart, 'Binche', Mixed Media, 1984 (Detail)

'Bram Bogart' continues until 7 March, at: White Cube, 25 - 26 Mason's Yard, London SW1Y 6BU

Pop Classics: Robert Indiana & Roy Lichtenstein At Tate Modern

Robert Indiana, Sculptures, Tate Modern, London, July 2019

A slightly concerning slump in my general energy levels, and an attendant apathy regarding social media upkeep (remember when we didn't have to bother with all this striving for attention?), make this my first post of the month.  Only a Doctor might ultimately reveal if my physical lethargy represents anything more sinister than the creeping passage of middle age, and I guess it's ultimately up to me to decide about what I can and can't really be bothered with, digitally.  But, for now, let's persevere, and keep the pot at least simmering with a slight return to my last trip to London, in July.  In particular, this post relates to the pleasurable hour I spent with Tate Modern's current Pop Art display.  

Robert Indiana, Sculptures, Tate Modern, London, July 2019

I definitely enjoy the way the Tate constantly reshuffles and recontextualises its permanent or loaned collections - not least because it makes each repeat visit a potentially stimulating new experience.  Sometimes this leads one to discover something completely new, but this time it was also an opportunity to revisit some perennial favourites in a new configuration.  I remain a sucker for a bit of Pop, and am often surprised to discover how, in the case of the best examples at least, the genre's self-proclaimed superficialities haven't faded, anywhere near as rapidly as one might expect, over the years.  Some of this stuff is certainly very familiar, and has been rendered pretty ubiquitous through repeated mass-media regurgitation, but there is something quite appropriate about that, after all.  In reality,  I still find much of it can still raise a smile, when encountered at first hand.  

Robert Indiana, Sculptures, Tate Modern, London, July 2019

This time round, it was intriguing to witness how the Tate had juxtaposed certain American 'classics' with much less well-known, stylistically sympathetic examples from the other side of the Iron Curtain.  There's clearly plenty to consider regarding the apparent critique of Pop's embrace of Capitalist aesthetics, from opposing sides of the Twentieth Century's ideological divide, and perhaps that's something this post might have been about.  Instead, it's really about how I was more self-indulgently distracted by two of my old Pop favourites - and by certain correspondences between their work, and my own.

I've long been a fan of Robert Indiana - not least for the elegant, emblematic qualities of his work, and the elegance with which he incorporated textual elements into his visual statements.  This is all very familiar from his crisp two-dimensional works, but it's also there in his frequent forays into sculpture.  Best known of those are the welded steel 'Love' monuments which still crop up in various international cities, and have continued to proliferate in a variety of media and formats, over the decades.  But, here at Tate, I was delighted to discover a cluster of his slightly less familiar, herm-like totems, occupying the centre of a large room. 

'Sentinel' Sculptures, 'Visions Of A Free-Floating Island', Surface Gallery, Nottingham,
September 2018

I've always loved these, not least for their formal clarity, but perhaps most of all - for their distinctly human qualities.  It's difficult not to regard them as standing figures, I feel - and also not to notice their formal similarity to certain, far more ancient statues.  I'm also prompted to marvel at how Indiana was able to adapt the glib, monosyllabic invocations of commercial signage or labelling, to further suggest, something intrinsically human (either physically or emotionally).  Like all the best Pop Art, they allow scope for philosophical meditation, whilst retaining a formal accessibility.  Most importantly - they are distinctly witty.

And, of course, it's now impossible not to admit that they were clearly in my mind (either consciously or otherwise) as I was constructing my 'Sentinel' sculptures last year.  The scale, format, and resulting figurative characteristics of those, make the connection pretty obvious - as do my similar attempts to apply apposite textual excerpts to a sculptural format.  Also, they seem to be equally 'of the street' in their use of low grade, found materials.  There's even a submission to the somewhat corny, in at least one or two of the 'Sentinels' - although I certainly don't claim to have got away with that, with anything like the knowing cool of Robert Indiana.

'Sentinel 5', Salvaged Cardboard Boxes, MDF, Adhesive Tape & Paper Collage & Acrylics,
 2018

'Sentinel 2' Salvaged Cardboard Boxes, MDF, Adhesive Tape, Paper Collage & Acrylics,
2018

Anyway, when not revelling in Indiana's statues, or struggling to find clear camera angles in what was a very popular gallery space - I was equally pleased to revisit two works by Roy Lichtenstein, hanging on the wall beyond.  As icons of Pop go, they don't get much more archetypal or over-familiar than Lichtenstein's 'Whaam!'.  In many respects, it could be said to encapsulate everything that's most resonant about American Pop Art.  Relish for the immediacy and mass-appeal of commercially motivated imagery - tick.  Exploration of the visual and formal tropes of mechanically reproduction - tick.  Dialogue between 'high' and 'low' art and the translation of imagery between certain media typical of them - tick.  Juxtaposition of the candy-coated blandishments of consumption-driven affluence, and the darker aspects of actual history - tick.  Exploitation of the potential of key imagery to both insulate the viewer from uncomfortable reality, and simultaneously open-up avenues of internal philosophical debate - tick.  Perhaps never were existential inconveniences (i.e: war and human slaughter), rendered quite so superficially cheery in a piece of gallery art.  And, perhaps most impressively, given its perennial recycling and possible slight fading of pigments - it still feels almost as crisp, fresh and provoking, as it must have in 1963.

Roy Lichtenstein, 'Whaam!', Acrylic & Oil on Canvas, 1963

Three years later, Lichtenstein made his own excursion into the third dimension, in the adjacent wall-mounted relief, 'Wall Explosion II'.  By extracting the already frozen and formalised emblem of the explosion, from 'Whaam!', and then rendering it in welded steel, he further pursued the idea of the instantaneous moment made tangible (or consumable - even).  Again, there's something both eloquent and undeniably 'Pop' (almost literally so) about the translation of a moment of destruction into a reproducible, and thus - marketable, commodity.  And his use of perforated mesh to allude to the ben-day dots of halftone reproduction, or even the stencils he might himself use to emulate them in paint, is just too damn clever for words.  Those are the same halftone dots I've tried to suggest or even collage into more than one of my own works, in recent years - but never in quite such a sophisticatedly oblique manner as Lichtenstein did here - sadly.

Roy Lichtenstein, 'Wall Explosion II', Enamel on Steel, 1965

Galleries Of Light

Tate Modern, London, July 2019

Visits to art galleries can still tend, by their very nature, to be an internalised type of experience.  Art works may (and increasingly do) function out here in the world, in a variety of contexts - both official and unofficial, but the default venue for much visual art still remains the gallery, of whatever variety - with all the associations that may imply.

David Zwirner Gallery, London, July 2019

Despite a growing imperative for galleries and museums to justify themselves in terms of some defined educational function or community outreach, (the sociological implications of which open up entire debates of their own), there is still a sense in which such spaces may act as crucibles of purely self-fulfilling, internal reflection.  Regardless of the agenda of an individual artist, curator or institution, 'Fine Art' (whatever the hell that now means) retains the function to act as a condenser of the viewer's individual thoughts and fantasies.  As long as that still applies, it seems desirable there should remain the possibility of a few 'neutral' spaces, shorn of any function other than to act as a venue for such unprescribed enlightenment.

Of course, I understand that any commercial gallery space has a very obvious economic function beyond the purely reflective, or that the transformation of many subsidised galleries into something identifying as 'arts labs' or educational outposts, implies a greater degree of participatory activation.  But even in these places, it's often still possible to sidestep a particular establishment's primary agenda, and just 'be' with artworks, if only as a peripheral activity.  For many this will sound elitist, socially unjustifiable, or just plain self indulgent.  I'm certainly not dismissing out of hand, the idea that art, and its consumption, may actually operate on various levels of functionality, (often simultaneously).  So, perhaps it's just a case of my reserving the right to decide what I think and feel for myself (in art as in life).  Maybe it's just the desire to retain some degree of subjectivity and personal mood-dependency, as significant components of my own art experience, alongside all the other stuff that might occur.

David Zwirner Gallery, London, July 2019

Which may be why, when a gallery context actually does intrude into my rarified 'art experience', as of course it must (context is everything, really - despite the above protestations), it can sometimes do so as its own variety of transferred aesthetic experience.  With surprising regularity, I find myself shifting focus from the actual work on display, to a portion of the physical environment in which it resides, or to the vista revealed through its windows - only for that to become it's own quasi-revelatory moment.  It's almost as though, rather than the functional imperatives of 'real life' always being applied to art from without - the current might also flow in the opposite direction.  Could it be that, a few meditative minutes spent with the right artworks, can transform one's perceptions of the material world beyond its own boundaries, once it re-intrudes, into something altogether more subjective or dreamlike?

Tate Modern, London, July 2019 (And Below)

Which is all mostly just a very pretentious way of saying - look at these slightly arty photos I took during my last gallery-going trip to London, whilst not focussing on the actual work. 

Must The Speed Of Light Really Preclude Time Travel?

All Images:  Kings Cross-St Pancras Underground Complex, London, February 2017

Tunnels and passages have constituted a periodic sub-theme on here, being one of those categories of physical urban structure (like towers, bridges, etc) whose emotional or psychological resonance far exceeds their basic function.  It's no secret that, for years now, this essentially subjective/poetic approach to the urban environment has been almost my entire raison d'être, artistically speaking, at least.

Although it's never been a stated intention, it's fair to say that much of that vision has tended towards the entropic, the marginally dystopian, or at least toward finding poetry within the nominally mundane.  Thus, the tunnels into which my camera has been habitually drawn have tended to be those which seem to burrow into The City's more obscure, forbidding recesses, or which seem to lead back in time somehow.  Many also seem to speak of unrealised Utopias - of futures that never were, if you like.

This one, at first glance at least, would seem to offer egress to a far more inspirational vision of futurity.  It's a highly distinctive feature of the revamped Kings Cross-St. Pancras Underground complex, which I captured towards the end of a long day walking around London with my good friend Susie, earlier this year.  Even with aching feet and dwindling energy levels - we were compelled to linger for a moment in its uplifting radiance.  Indeed, this may be, I suppose, partly what the designers intended - the provision of a soothing, sensory balm for the jaded traveller.

There's something distinctly of the twenty-first century about the way this particular tunnel suffuses the pedestrian in light along its entire length.  Rather than leading one physically and symbolically toward (or indeed, away from) 'the light' as older conduits might, this one begins to transmute the entire material environment into a less tangible dimension - one in which masonry is replaced by photons.  As the more expressively manipulated of these images suggest, there's a sense of the tunnel's denizens becoming suspended in an increasingly virtual environment - in which sensory response is more important than actual physical location.  This definitely feels like something to which our current cutting-edge technologies would appear to aspire.

But, come on - you wouldn't expect me to leave such a roseate interpretation totally unmediated, would you?   Even whilst enjoying the obvious beauty of this subterranean spectacle, I'm also reminded of many of the popular science-fiction realisations of my youth.  There is more than a hint of, for instance, Dr. Who, or Star Trek, I think - and thus, of a future in which much of one's time might be spent striding along seemingly endless, over-illuminated corridors.  Something in that gentle curve suggests the USS Enterprise's superstructural disc, whilst the tunnel's clearly-visible modular structure seems to recall one of those TV budget-constrained alien complexes into which the good Doctor periodically time travelled.

It always felt a little disappointing to me that, for all their technological advances, the aliens (or indeed, the humans of the future) should favour a design aesthetic not so far removed in its sleek blandness from the average corporate H.Q.

'Life During Wartime' *

All Images: Edgware, South Bank & Tate Modern, London, May 2017

The City Aspires...

The City Assimilates...

The City Informs...

The City Accretes...

The City Reflects...

...And Illuminates.

* Talking Heads, 'Life During Wartime' (D. Byrne), From the Album: 'Fear Of Music', 1979

Painting On Into The Machine Age

'Painting After Technology' Gallery, Tate Modern, London, May 2015.  (L-R): Work By:
Laura Owens, Wade Guyton, Tomma Abts, Albert Oehlen

A few posts back, I wrote belatedly about a gallery trip to London I made earlier this year.  My goal was to visit retrospective exhibitions of work by Richard Diebenkorn and Marlene Dumas, both of which were well worth the trip.  However, with a spare hour to kill at Tate Modern, I also dipped into the latest hang of the permanent collection.  I want to consider a little of what I found there in this post.  Although it’s after-the-event, it all has some bearing on current thoughts about my own work, both recent, and to come.  Interestingly, while the main reason for my visit was to enjoy two favourite artists not directly related to my own stuff, these serendipitous discoveries actually feel surprisingly applicable to it.

Gerhard Richter, 'Cage' Paintings (L-R: '1,2,3'), Tate Modern, London, May 2015

I love such inexplicable ‘gifts’ and, whatever else the Tate may or may not be, I find it a regular source of revealing discoveries or refreshing new juxtapositions.  This is in part due to the curatorial habit of regularly shuffling and recontextualising the collection thematically rather than chronologically, seemingly to avoid standard, tired accounts of Art History.  It may also be due to fact that I visit London less regularly these days.  Several visits a year have now dwindled to one or two, and things I’ve become familiar with over the years can seem a little fresher once more.  Absence makes the heart grow stronger, perhaps.  However, the things that really caught my attention this time were mostly new to me.

Gerhard Richter, 'Cage 1', Oil On Canvas, 2006

Gerhard Richter, 'Cage 2', Oil On Canvas, 2006

I had started by heading straight for Gerhard Richter’s room of ‘Cage’ paintings.  I’ve loved this suite of six, immense, squeegee-dragged abstracts since they were installed in the wake of Richter’s large Tate retrospective in 2012.  As a visitor attraction, it may now serve a similar function to the famous ‘Rothko Room’, in the Tate’s mind, but I find rather more of interest and philosophical complexity in the Richters, these days.  Richter’s technique of repeatedly dragging his accretions of paint over and through each other is simple in essence, but highly complex in terms of outcome.  The ‘Cage’ works actually encapsulate a wealth of insight into the nature of time, process, self-reflexivity, and (of prevailing interest), the materiality of paint.  Notwithstanding his status as an established giant of international painting, he still does it for me as regards balancing Philosophy with a tireless medium.

Gerhard Richter, 'Cage 4', Oil On Canvas, 2006

Gerhard Richter, 'Cage 6', Oil On Canvas, 2006

In an adjacent gallery, entitled ‘Torn Papers And Walls Paper’, I discovered a newly hung trio of pieces of direct relevance to my own recent concerns.  Gordon Matta-Clark’s ‘Walls Paper’ commemorates a more extensive installation of 1972, comprising an entire wall, papered with printed, manipulated photos of part-demolished New York project buildings.  Whilst its near-abstract qualities are engaging in their own right, the piece also appears to engage with issues of architectural transformation and the inadequacy of affordable housing provision.  Covering the walls with repeated images like this suggests both the compartmentalisation of low-rent accommodation, and the pasting of fly-posters within an urban environment.

Gordon Matta-Clark, 'Walls Paper', Printed Paper, Original Installation At David Zwimer Gallery,
New York, 1972

Of even more immediate impact was Jacques Villeglé’s ‘Jazzmen’.  I already knew this piece, as one of his classic found-poster ‘Affiches Lacérées’, but it works particularly well conceptually, in its present company.  Simply re-exhibiting a battered section of advertising material may seem a fairly facile strategy these days, (albeit one that appeals greatly in its directness), but back in 1961 it had considerable radical currency and is clearly in the Duchampian tradition of the ‘Readymade’.  The activities of Villeglé and his fellow ‘Nouveaux Realistes’ appear to antecede and coincide with certain Situationist ideas, not least in their conception of the streets as an arena of self-generating images, texts and potential detournements.  No prizes for guessing why I’m always happy to see this work.

Jacques Mahe De La Villegle, 'Jazzmen', Printed Paper On Canvas, 1961

Mark Bradford, 'Riding The Cut Vein', Paper, Varnish, Silicone, Caulk & Charcoal On Canvas, 2013

The third piece in that gallery, and one of particular relevance to my own recent output, is Mark Bradford’s ‘Riding The Cut Vein’ from 2013.  It’s another mural-sized piece, of incredible intricacy, also constructed from layered posters, (heavily manipulated and abraded, this time).  Appearing initially abstract, the loose, mesh-like geometry extending across its upper portion soon reveals itself as a form of notional, street map.  That is carved into an indescribably nuanced surface, created by employing power tools to sand and grind back through the accumulated paper strata.  The process reveals a dazzling array of colours, patterns and text fragments, like a field of granular micro-clues.  Naturally, all this speaks loudly to my own recent concerns with urban cartography, found texts and hybrid poster-collage.  Spookily coincidental though it may seem, I’d never even heard of Bradford prior to this encounter, (honest, Guv.).  A little Googling suggests I’ll be investigating his oeuvre a lot more in the future.

Mark Bradford, 'Riding The Cut Vein', 2013,  (Detail)

Mark Bradford, 'Untitled', Manipulated & Collaged Posters On Canvas, 2009

If that little room detained me for several enjoyable minutes, I gained even greater stimulation from the larger gallery immediately beyond.  Gathered under the banner of ‘Painting After Technology’, this new hang showcases a selection of big (and big-ish) names in the field of contemporary or near-contemporary Art.  Amongst these, were interesting pieces by Tomma Abts, Charline Von Heyl, Laura Owens, Jacqueline Humphries, Wade Guyton, Sigmar Polke, and, especially pleasingly, Christopher Wool and Albert Oehlen.  Fairly obviously, all can be said to make some specific reference to the relationship between traditional and ‘new’ (be that digital or mechanically reproduced) media [1.].  Polke is, I suppose, the granddaddy here, consciously looking back to the layered halftone, found imagery of Pop Art, as he does.  Along with several others here, he also emphasises the importance of German painting in recent decades.  In that context, (and thinking of daft, old George Baselitz), is it also worth noting how many of these notable artists are women?).

Sigmar Polke, 'Untitled (Square 2)', Oil, Acrylic & Gold Paint On Canvas, 2003

I’ve been thinking about those media relationships a lot recently, whilst the work of both Wool and Oehlen in particular, are recent enthusiasms of mine, without my having actually seen any for real previously.  I initially came to Wool through his ironic, monochrome text paintings, but the large ‘Untitled’ canvas of 2007, represents a looser, more recent mode of wiped, abstraction.  It’s impossible not to find some memory of graffiti in the calligraphic elements, but these paintings are as much about the accumulation of fluid marks through repeated erasures and cancellations.  Wool’s gestural turps-wipes into thinly painted statements, leave a history of swipes, drips, ghost marks, veils and general nuance.  The results are confident in scale, but remain pleasingly nebulous and transitory in overall effect.  They speak of the movement of a human hand, the fluid plasticity of paint, the implied accretion of grime and incoherent texts in city streets, and the ceaseless cycles of statement, partial cancellation and restatement, (ad infinitum), that characterise Wool’s urban context.

Christopher Wool, 'Untitled', Enamel On Canvas, 2007

Were this all that Wool offered, it would be plenty, - but essentially just another iteration of traditional painterly abstraction.  However, as the augmented screen print, ('Untitled', 2009), hanging alongside reveals, Wool’s overall process is one in in which a wide variety of visual statements (and application methods) are endlessly recycled, repurposed and reproduced through photography and print media as well as paint.  Ultimately, nothing feels like a definitive statement, but rather just the latest image in an endless reverie of grimy city streets.  It feels like everything informs everything else, and even the overriding tendency towards abstraction is modified by the significant role of Wool’s bleakly atmospheric documentary photographs in the overall scheme.

Christopher Wool, 'Untitled', Enamel On Screen Print On Paper, 2009

Christopher Wool, 'Absent Without Leave', Photocopied Photograph (Part Of Artist's Book), 1993

Oehlen is another well-established artist who nevertheless sees to occupy a position of continuing relevance (or something to do with what is often called ‘Zeitgeist’).  Earlier work seems to belong to a mode of deliberately awkward German daubing that does relatively little for, but although it’s difficult not to admire the sheer bloody-minded will to stir things up that it implies.  2007’s ‘Loa’, however, represents a more multi-layered mode of combining elements of collaged promotional material with almost arbitrary instances of smeared or sprayed paint and textual references to contemporary music.

Albert Oehlen, 'Loa', Acrylic, Oil, Ink, Spray Paint, Photograph & Paper Collage On Canvas

There’s often a slightly slap-dash, even unfocussed quality about much of this, almost as if Oehlen was drawing upon a grab bag of contemporary stimuli whilst partially distracted.  It’s the kind of thing one might even imagine being made whilst simultaneously watching TV or checking their phone.  And yet, is this not actually highly representative of our current, attention-deficient cultural consciousness?  In fact, there is some variety of awkward formal coherence about much of Oehlen’s work, but one that appears to emerge, as if by accident, through the eventual condensation of suspiciously aimless statements. 

Albert Oehlen, 'Untitled', Oil & Ink On Canvas, 2007

That’s also there in his linear 'Computer Paintings', to some extent.  They could be dismissed as resembling those potentially endless free doodles we all practiced the first time we encountered a PC mouse, but further examination reveals they are actually rather more knowingly constructed.  The combination of free, directly drawn statements, with more deliberately filtered effects of pixilation, or pattern-generation, clearly exploit certain effects intrinsic to the medium.  Intriguingly, they also indicate that it has long-since acquired a kind of recognisable ‘tradition’.

If encountering Wool and Oehlen provided my biggest single excitements, there was much else in the gallery to engage me and provoke thought.  Wade Guyton’s large-scale ink jet print, ‘Untitled’ (2011), exhibits an abstract minimalism that feels distinctly Modernist. However the apparent attempt to print a solid block of ink are full of banding, glitches, accidental marks and empty areas, undermining any sense of seamless mechanical perfection or even, adequate manufacture.  It’s probably no accident that the two halves appear actually seamed together.

Wade Guyton, 'Untitled', Inkjet Print On Linen, 2011

Of all the pieces in the room, Tomma Abt’s thoughtful, little quasi-Op painting, ‘Zebe’, from 2010, stood out for its characteristic modest scale.  It might be possible to make some case for this piece representing the importance of craft, in contrast to the deliberate superficiality, or even vacuity, of certain pieces surrounding it [2.]. Paradoxically though, this tendency towards insubstantiality, or a kind of ungroundedness, feels like one of the qualities that most links much of that work with its particular moment.  It feels less like a problem, once it becomes something perfectly worthy of exploration. [3.]. 

Tomma Abts, 'Zebe', Acrylic & Oil On Canvas, 2010

It may be that, as usual, I’m a decade behind everyone else, but it definitely feels like there are implications, in much of this work, that could usefully inform my own.  Whatever the future holds, there’s little to suggest that our collective perceptions won’t continue to be transformed by advancing digital technology.  This is probably equally true, regardless of whether one actually employs it as a means of production, or simply lets it inform a kind of surface-slide, aesthetically.  One question is, I suppose, to what extent we choose to be shaped by it; to embrace it imaginatively; or to actively push back against any sense of deterministic impotence.

My own feeling is that, as ever, it’s all up for grabs really.  I suspect, someone is already writing an algorithm to simulate the kind of intuitive thought characteristic of painting, but that it may still look (interestingly) more like itself than ‘actual’ painting.  I also trust that artists will still find ways to corrupt any code, on an arbitrary whim, for a little longer yet.  Perhaps, in the long run, some recourse to authenticity, and/or an attitude of subversive adoption, will co-exist as superficially opposed, but equally useful, ways to chart the course ahead.

[1.]:  Dan Perfect would be another artist, with whose work I have become acquainted in the last year or two, and who seems to engage with various, related issues.  Certainly, a process of digital translation appears to unmistakably alter the final appearance of his painting.

[2.]:  There is, indeed, an actual vacancy of ill-resolved paint at the very heart of Oehlen’s ‘Loa’. 

[3.]:  I have heard it claimed that many newer artists now crave a greater sense of authenticity, and even, laughably, that ‘Authenticity’ is now ‘in’, (think about it).