It was not just the link to
dividing up the imaginary space which exists between the narrative of painting
and its process but the artists approach which created a thematic subject – and
that was an understanding and disruption of high modernism.
Of course – we cannot bypass the
whole scope of the intrinsic power, relationship and deconstructed-formal
element which the artists establish. The exhibition by its very title REAL
PAINTING is suggestive of a state where the painting exists as a sculptural
process than an imaginary one – devoid of the metaphysical.
Adriano Costa’s kaleidoscopic
installations respond to the irrationality of the neo-concrete movement which
occurred in his birthplace of Brazil – of course, he disputes any form of ideology
in a metamorphosis of the neo-concrete’s coherent manoeuvre into the future of
creative exploration. Making a deviation from art-historical tradition and
putting an emphasis on the vernacular nature of the object.
Angela De La Cruz gave us a wall
mount cuboid nothing dissimilar to Judd (Compressed 1 (White))
– only to be broken and crumpled from the base – allowing us to witness the
material, its components and action to release it from true form. And likewise
throughout the exhibition, there is this connection where the two-dimensional
space, the expectation or the confines of tradition is fragmented and allows us
to view and become intimate with the work.
This discourse – which seemingly
brings together the exhibiting artists, such as Costa, Gilfford and Covell –
forgets about the hegemony which is implicitly attached to high modernism. They
inform us sculpturally whilst representing the familiarity of painting and how
the audience reads the image. The
show looks at how the audience collate and recognise the structure of painting
through its history, and then it strips it down.
The artists do not provide us – the audience – with a
reason; they do not want to allow us into a concrete and formal assembly – or
set of ideologies. Rather, they provide us with the satisfaction of
construction and reconstruction, of being materially apparent – which has in
itself its own power to redefine the limitations.