We live in an image saturated era. Digital media, television, film, video, the internet, surround us and entertain us, follow us every waking hour. Hand-held technologies have made us both incessant consumers but also constant makers and editors of images.
‘Saturation’ looks at the role of painting in contemporary artistic production in Spain.
Painting practices question the very discipline itself by the de-assembling or reconfiguring of the picture plane, or by the deconstruction of the pictorial image. Image is some time replaced by the materials of painting, unfolded into sculptures. Occasionally, the image resembles a map of decoupled references for the eye to wander and rest. The replaced image references video, digital media, afterimage in an exuberant wash of colour.
Painting is performed and re-enacted, painting directly on the gallery or removed to the realm of video or film. Physical and visual limits are probed, and tools or technologies are deployed to extend the reach of the arm, expand the extent of a brushstroke or stretch the colour spectrum visible to a human eye.
In contrast, other Painting explores the reading of narrative and sub or counter-narrative on canvas and paper. Borrowing from the photographic medium and techniques (Cut and Paste, collage, scale distortions etc...) painting re-assembles appropriated imagery to overlay and complicate associations and meaning. Are we ourselves witness to the depicted events or a party to the act of witness (painting) itself? This new figuration elides the very distinction, bearing witness to both and neither. These borrowed images are not stable or steal-able. The fact of oil or acrylic on canvas or paper is itself at stake.
Saturation will present the work of 17 contemporary Spanish painters over 3 spaces, exploring the extents and means of painting production now.
‘Saturation’ looks at the role of painting in contemporary artistic production in Spain.
Painting practices question the very discipline itself by the de-assembling or reconfiguring of the picture plane, or by the deconstruction of the pictorial image. Image is some time replaced by the materials of painting, unfolded into sculptures. Occasionally, the image resembles a map of decoupled references for the eye to wander and rest. The replaced image references video, digital media, afterimage in an exuberant wash of colour.
Painting is performed and re-enacted, painting directly on the gallery or removed to the realm of video or film. Physical and visual limits are probed, and tools or technologies are deployed to extend the reach of the arm, expand the extent of a brushstroke or stretch the colour spectrum visible to a human eye.
In contrast, other Painting explores the reading of narrative and sub or counter-narrative on canvas and paper. Borrowing from the photographic medium and techniques (Cut and Paste, collage, scale distortions etc...) painting re-assembles appropriated imagery to overlay and complicate associations and meaning. Are we ourselves witness to the depicted events or a party to the act of witness (painting) itself? This new figuration elides the very distinction, bearing witness to both and neither. These borrowed images are not stable or steal-able. The fact of oil or acrylic on canvas or paper is itself at stake.
Saturation will present the work of 17 contemporary Spanish painters over 3 spaces, exploring the extents and means of painting production now.