Matthew Allen, Studio Installation of Untitled 1 and 2, 2017, polished graphite and joint compound on linen, 24 x 30 cm each. Image Courtesy of Sullivan+Strumpf and the Artist
These polished graphite works are concerned with time, labor and an attentiveness to material. The highly hand worked surfaces bring the medium of graphite to its material and perceptual limit as the repetitive action of burnishing and polishing creates a shifting mirror like surface that gives way to its surroundings. Depiction gives way to reflection.
Material, process, surface and space are compacted into tight forms that delineate a constantly shifting pictorial experience.
Mathew Allen’s paintings form an ongoing inquiry into the materiality of paint upon canvas and the fundamentality of painting itself: colour, medium and process. Purity of medium and the experience of colour form the kernel of the artist’s abstract approach. The paintings are composed of a ground colour coated in transparent or translucent glazes, producing subtle, atmospheric gradients of tone. Devoid of any formal composition and physical traces of the artist’s hand, the works recall the aesthetic of abstract expressionism and the colour field painters of the Washington colour school (exemplified by artists such as Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis in the 1960s). Their purity of colour, form and expression is somewhat therapeutic, tapping into the viewer’s subjectivity by triggering unique sensory and emotional engagement.
Opening: Saturday 14 October, 5 – 7pm
Venue: Sullivan+Strumpf Singapore, 5 Lock Road #01-06, Singapore 108933
When: 14 Oct - 5 Nov 2017,
