10 December 2004 - 23 January 2005
Gary Simmonds uses ornamental motifs that repeat and evolve from a process where the artist repeatedly drags paint with a squeegee from the outside in, smearing the colours into variegated densities. Star formations build into thick, transluscent and kaleidoscopic patinas while the paintings' repitition incurs a necessary symmetrical geometry. Darker, denser and more painterly than his earlier work the paintings in this exhibition are less controlled and owe less to a preconceived manner of execution and end product.
Built into a rigid 4’ x 4’ format the activity of the painting is far more contained than in previous works and also carries an echo of the rigors of a past modernist ideal. Thick pastels merge with luminescent washes in opaque blocks and coarse textured skins. Spills, blemishes and pock marks fill the surfaces in, sometimes, ungainly colour combinations. The assumed construction of the paintings leaves a trace that is at once more fluid and spontaneous but also more restless and raw. Bringing to mind the works of European colourists such as Katharina Grosse, Ingo Meller and Olivier Mosset and the liquidity of American painter David Reed.
Fizgig