Happy New year…

…and thank you, kind visitors, who have taken the time to drop by and comment on my blog over the past year.
Here’s to a peaceful New Year!

Jimmy de Sana

Jimmy De Sana
27 November 2009 – 17 January 2010
Wlkinson
London
E2

De Sanas work was influenced by surrealism. He created unexpected juxtapositions between objects ans bodies, limbs and torsos, often in a tinted glow of artificially coloured light. He printed all his own work and used his friends as models and was a member of the generation of Artist-Photographers known for making rather than simply taking photographs, taking Man Rays idea of creating the photographic image from scratch. (Wilkinson)

I love De Sanas work I am drawn to them for their darkness and their playful yet sinister settings.

Jimmy De Sana delineated his love of objects and the exemplary lie of photography in an interview with Diego Cortez in 1986: “A photograph is how much you want to lie, how far you want to stretch the truth about the object. And, as photography is always based on real objects, it lends itself, by means of technique or manipulation, to explorations of what may appear to be an absence of reality, balancing on an ambiguous line between concrete and abstract space, between reality and illusion in a way that no other medium is able to do.” De Sana’s career began as it ended – in the exploration of those various balanced betweens. His catalogue raissone could be called “Juxtaposition, or The Erotic Life of Next to.”

The work could be split fairly evenly between the figurative and the more abstract, textured photographs. The latter had less effect on me, as I am first and always drawn to the figure.

I have posted about De Sana before but there wasnt an exhibit on at the time.
A Past Exhibit (which I missed of course): 101 Nudes

Rubbernecking

Rubbernecking
4 Dec 2009 – 10 Jan 2010
Transition
London
E8

New work by three inspirational British painters…
Rubbernecking, the slang expression that describes the act of gawking at someone or something, particularly car crashes is not only a look-come-see inducement to the curious viewer but also refers to a tendency underscoring the work of these three artists, all of whom are concerned in some way with a tension between a cartoon graphic quality and the rough texture of impasto paint. (Transition)

Jake Clark-Cornerways II, 2009, oil on canvas
Clark uses collage, layering and thick applications of paint. Areas of pattern become visible on closer inspection reminiscent of layers of wallpaper and past generations. Clark manages to show us both the exterior and interior space of these dwellings simultaneously and in doing so conjures strong feelings of recognition and a hint of curtain twitching.

I was excited to see a painting exhibit rich in the ‘life’ of paint. The Artists here share an ability to allow paint to do its work, they strike the balance perfectly, allowing the viewer to see the hand of the Artist but ‘feel’ the paint at work.

Philip Allen

Allen shows a group of paintings that lie on the slip road of his practice. Often bringing in figurative elements these paintings are unlike what we have come to expect from him. (Transition)

This certainly seems to be the case, the paintings exhibited in Rubbernecking seem to be ‘almost theres’ when compared to Allen’s larger scale and more ‘finished’ paintings. However they are no less successful but more playful, the artists hand seems more obvious and an intimacy is revealed that is missing in the larger pieces.

Philip Allen-Achievement and Retention, 2002,Oil on board, 112x244cm

Rose Wylie

Each of our three gawpers are concerned with new ways of applying paint to create personal and fresh images that crash with the faded Festival of Britain feeling that permeates the surfaces of their work creating a counter-intuitive, bang-up-to-date contemporary.(Transition)

It is this theme that leads the viewer, with subtlety, into the smaller exhibition space *shop Space*. Griffiths gives us beauty in domestic settings, ordinary and overlooked areas of our homes, an object or a bathroom that immediately transported me back to childhood.

Shop Space: Damian Griffiths

Spectrum – You can think about the photograph as an image. You can think about the photograph as an object. You can think about the photograph as a concept. You can think about a photograph as all of these things simultaneously. When I look at this collection of photographs I’m thinking about red, yellow, muddy green, warm orange, electric pink, winter blue, and barely there black. There are other ways to see these photographs. (Transition.)

I can see that Griffith’s focus is on colour, along with the photographs included here were the neon lights of a dark street and the midnight blues of , perhaps, dusk. In the domestic scenes colour seems hugely important, perhaps an indication of the passing of time within our homes. There is also a strong theme of the object’s use. The domestic scenes (or possibly that of a work place) show the viewer objects within spaces that have an important use, switches, dials…the mechanics of a house. But I could be reading to much into them.

I really enjoyed this exhibit.
Fantastic that I have my new camera.
Useless that I had it on the wrong setting for a gallery environment.
Credit to Transition and Damian Griffiths, for the images used.

…

trade-2009, oil on canvas. 122×152