30 April - 6 June 2004
Hideatsu Shiba’s paintings are like slight, pared-down, muted studies in oil that seem like exercises in selective disclosure of information; but are studies rendered with abstemiousness and emotional ambiguity. The still - seemingly out of sync - alacrity of the paintings belie a rigour and studiousness that sometimes sees each one made many times over. The choice of colours, though mismatched and awry, are carefully calculated in advance and then refined as they are laid down during the construction of the painting. The tones he favours are often reminiscent of the 1950’s restrained and frugal approach to colouration, but also of the more sombre works by Mark Rothko of the same period and of Barnett Newman also. Shiba’s source of subject matter is taken from found photographs, to text books, to the internet; revising, sifting and editing the information.
A series of four paintings focuses on light optical effects in science and nature; first with the viewing of the eclipse, then the first atomic explosion, and then, as recreational counterparts to technology, in 3D and virtual-viewing spectacles. The faint reflection of a molecular formula in the spectacles of ‘Scientist’ maintains the theme of painting as part science, part epistemology and part pleasure. In ‘Greenhouse’ Shiba appropriates the greenhouse as a laboratory of ideas acting as a metaphor for painting, and the study of painting as ontological. Sometimes working in series and sometimes alluding to genre, his works of landscape forest scenes bathed in cool, tranquil light are executed straightforwardly and ingenuously.
