It says, in short, that the event looms up suddenly, surges up into presence even, from an incurable nothingness, an inconsolable void accompanied by a magical blotter, a drinker or eraser of . . . of what precisely? the void? the event? or the surging into presence itself?
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Or is the event that which blots out, as if by magic, the nothingness in and from which the event is given?
What might it mean to consider the painting, the way it comes into presence from almost nothing, as an event?
Painting is usually considered and practiced as a means of representation, a means of producing or capturing an image that is somehow "like" what we might see: Holbein's portraits are for me the greatest examples of what I would call representational presence, they have an effect of presenting, in flesh and blood as it were, the lived experience of the presence of someone. One almost does not simply contemplate or view a Holbein portrait: one goes to meet it.
I am happiest with my own work when it has a character that I would describe as magical, in the sense of an unexpected, surprising, inexplicable or otherwise wonderful event. One such event occurred at the opening of my last solo show "TOUCH" at the Lane Gallery where at about half past 7 the setting sun hit the glass skin of the Lumley building nearby and reflected directly onto the piece shown in the photograph here. This was totally unexpected and, for the time it lasted, set the piece on fire. Most of my subsequent work and even the basic ideas of my installations have been directed towards making such events possible.
I am very attracted to the idea of a work being illuminated in a particular way just once a year, when the sun happens to interact with the architecture in such a way that a wall and hence what is on the wall come under direct illumination, perhaps only once per year, as if the work were a kind of sundial, as if the work were a way of spatialising the passage of time itself.
Of course the effects produced by my works are totally explicable, all it takes is high-school level optics and a bit of chemistry and the effects are totally exposed for what they are: what I am calling the "magical" is a more or less fictive effect of unpredictability or un-repeatability.
Because my working practices are fairly spontaneous my works are unrepeatable, unique. Even when I have (as I often do) work on two or more related works at once what surprises me are the great differences that arise simply from random, unconscious, unpredictable differences of atmospheric condition, lighting, placement.
+struck+by+reflected+sunlight.jpg)
What might it mean to consider the painting, the way it comes into presence from almost nothing, as an event?
Painting is usually considered and practiced as a means of representation, a means of producing or capturing an image that is somehow "like" what we might see: Holbein's portraits are for me the greatest examples of what I would call representational presence, they have an effect of presenting, in flesh and blood as it were, the lived experience of the presence of someone. One almost does not simply contemplate or view a Holbein portrait: one goes to meet it.
I am happiest with my own work when it has a character that I would describe as magical, in the sense of an unexpected, surprising, inexplicable or otherwise wonderful event. One such event occurred at the opening of my last solo show "TOUCH" at the Lane Gallery where at about half past 7 the setting sun hit the glass skin of the Lumley building nearby and reflected directly onto the piece shown in the photograph here. This was totally unexpected and, for the time it lasted, set the piece on fire. Most of my subsequent work and even the basic ideas of my installations have been directed towards making such events possible.
Of course the effects produced by my works are totally explicable, all it takes is high-school level optics and a bit of chemistry and the effects are totally exposed for what they are: what I am calling the "magical" is a more or less fictive effect of unpredictability or un-repeatability.
Because my working practices are fairly spontaneous my works are unrepeatable, unique. Even when I have (as I often do) work on two or more related works at once what surprises me are the great differences that arise simply from random, unconscious, unpredictable differences of atmospheric condition, lighting, placement.
