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'Beyond the Surface' at The Crypt, 2018
© Julie Umerle |
As a society we are losing the
ability to look for a sustained length of time, our gaze now reduced to a
glimpse. So accustomed are we to seeing images that they hardly register,
perhaps pictures themselves are now losing their value.
In this regard digital media has a lot to
answer for: over the course of the last decade, the quantity of images that we
consume on a daily – or even hourly basis – has ballooned in direct proportion
with the invasion of screens in our public and private personal space.
According to a 2015 article in the New York Times, more than a trillion photos
are taken every year. Where looking at an image was once a luxury to be
savoured – think back to church paintings, engravings, even early photography –
today an image barely makes a mark on our consciousness, so fleeting is it. As
a result, our visual attention span is shortening: images have become a kind of
constant enveloping feature of our habitat, always present but to which we now
pay little attention.
Furthermore, the majority of
images that bombard us in our pervasive digital lives are readily digestible,
without the need for intellectual effort – in fact their success depends wholly
upon their directness. Due to the vast quantity of images that vie with one
another for our attention, the more direct the image the better the chances it
has of registering in our minds. Consequently, we are losing our ability to
look with depth at images, to see beyond the surface.
This therefore presents a serious
challenge for those of us in the realm of painting. A painting asks us to spend
time with it, the more time the better, and to reflect, investigate, imagine.
But if visual audiences are now looking for just a fraction of a second, and
expect immediacy of message, how do we counteract this?
The work in Beyond the Surface
contains various geometrical elements: grids, doorways, blocks of colour,
visual imageplay which perhaps hold our attention for longer than is customary.
The underlying connection between the paintings is their internal structure,
their sense of order and the way in which they work within the boundaries of
the canvas. In an interview in The White Review in 2015, Rosalind Krauss stated
that “the movement towards abstraction is
a move towards the reflexive presentation of the material substrate of the
work: the frame, the canvas.” All of
the paintings in this exhibition work within these reflections, and the
exhibition as a whole reflects upon the length and the depth of the gaze in the
digital world. © Piers Veness, 2018
The exhibition BEYOND THE SURFACE: six abstract painters curated by Piers Veness, presents the work of six painters working with abstraction - Hanz Hancock, Patrick Morrissey, Marion Piper, Julie Umerle, Piers Veness and Simon Zabell.
Beyond the Surface is part of the Contemporary British Painting exhibition programme at The Crypt in St Marylebone Parish Church and organised by Square Art Projects.
28 March - 14 June 2018.
The Crypt, 17 Marylebone Road, St Marylebone Parish Church, London NW1 5LT
Open Mon - Fri 9am - 4pm, Sun closed
Occasionally The Crypt closes for private meetings, you can phone ahead to check times on 020 7935 7315 or 07809330592
