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| James Lindsay |
The first thing James says after the introductions, is that
he feels claustrophobic in the gallery with all the art. Then he takes me over to the bureau he’s
brought into the gallery as a part of his contribution. It is an antique with two drawers and two
doors in the front. They are empty. The
top though is covered in a collection of glass vessels, ivory beads, a wooden
tea cup, a buddha, pencils and other things.
It is the dust mottled on the glass that he is most urgent in pointing
out. He did not think of the analogy
present in dust (ashes to ashes, dust to dust) before bringing the collection
to the gallery, but he was very careful not to disturb that dust. He wanted it intact.
He marvels too at seeing this home collection reconstructed
so perfectly in the gallery. It’s
shocking to see a portion of his home, his life, his long life of collecting so
completely out of it’s familiar context. Uncanny is the word he uses. It’s
difficult at first to understand exactly why this installation needs to be
included in this two-man show of paintings and drawings, other than to suggest,
that these objects are an integral part of his home life and studio, and
objects can be powerfully symbolic of times, places and people, of a life
pieced together through long years of experience. Memories, maybe, but also
being objects they don’t really change much, other than to collect dust.
His paintings are all in one long line interrupted only by
the bureau and a seascape painting hanging on the wall directly above it. The colours and the lines initially provoking a
fun-house response, they remind me of Sandra Meig’s paintings. Lots of pastel-like colouring, strange quirky
painted lines in white, lots of arbitrary divisions in space. But then with him
standing beside me, his fragile influence, I see that in spite of the flatness
of the paint, the imagery is somehow moving quietly to the back, far away from
the surface to a place untouchable, perhaps unknowable. They make me feel sad
and also protective.
At the beginning of the line, before the bureau and the
landscape, are two paintings. These are
the first two in the series, and the work as it is displayed is largely chronological
and moving from left to right. The first
two were found paintings, both signed by some unknown person named Kim. Spray-bomb paintings and not great either,
but apparently a powerful source of inspiration for James because in re-working
these two paintings with little touches here and there, never eradicating the
original, but adding structure and colour, he was able to begin painting again after
a long hiatus. He calls this creative opportunism.
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| Lance Austin Olsen |
He’s also amazed at seeing his work out of context as it
were. To see just a few selected
paintings or drawings representing an enormous output is perhaps somewhat
confusing. He seems uncertain whether this is good or bad. If he had the space
to show all of his work at once, would they look too much alike?
In all of Lance’s work at the gallery, six paintings and
several large drawings on mylar, there are large black shapes dominating what
can only be described as the supporting marks. The supporting marks are the layers
of softer shapes and colours, smaller brush strokes and pencil marks. On top of
all this are these solid black shapes bulging out and away from the gallery
walls in way that is vivid, full frontal and bold.
In an earlier review by Philip Willey it was mentioned that,
“Both Lindsay and Olsen are approaching the end of their respective journeys of
discovery. There’s nothing morbid or gloomy about this show but there is an
invisible presence. Both artists must think about death occasionally”. Consequently
it is the topic of death that we start and stop on several times. James refers
to the bold black shapes in Lance’s paintings as omens or growths, as death,
and it’s hard to disagree, but Lance just laughs, loudly, and says that Bill
Porteous gave him a gallon of black gesso and he’s trying to use it all up.
Because his studio is small, Lance has only room to work three
large sheets of paper at a time. He
paints with acrylic on paper always because paper is easy to store. Whatever
three paintings he has in progress may evolve to form a single painting, other
times they are related but separate. The papers are always the same size. They come packaged and pre-cut. He says that
whatever he has he likes. He does not fight his materials and he does not fight
constraints.
His drawings on mylar are intense, loaded with frenetic
black marks. The mylar comes off a roll and he cuts it quickly and haphazardly
so that the edges are blurred and wavy. Two-handed drawings, he demonstrates,
holding both fists up in the air and moving them very quickly in stabbing-like
patterns. He says that the drawings were
made during a period when his wife was busy home-schooling their
grandkids. So, each lesson took one hour
and during that hour, Lance went to his studio and scribbled like fury until
the end of the lesson. End of lesson,
end of drawing. End of lessons, end of
series. There were 25 lessons, 25 drawings.
James’ paintings were all made in 2014, the last in the
series finished after he suffered a stroke in August of that year. They begin
with the re-worked found paintings, the first of which features a cameo style
portrait of a lady, the second he refers to as space junk, and from there he begins
the move from representational to very abstract. These abstract paintings are
his alone. After a couple of intermediary pieces, the first a Baconesque image
of a foreshortened nude and a lightbulb and the next featuring bubble-like shapes
and tulips, the paintings seem to settle into a repetitive motif of colour,
shape and line. Repetitive, maybe meditative. Definitely narrative. A story of
change told not in words, but in oil paint.
Each of these paintings starts with two or three painted
vertical lines, which lines produce the shapes that he calls pillars. This is
the beginning. The pillars are filled with many flat areas of colour, there are
a lot greens, some purples and blues, orange and brown. Sometimes these
coloured areas are covered in lines, suggestive of architecture or an
industrial landscape but there is that pulsing quality that speaks to biology
as well. Something alive perhaps but
somehow most truly suggestive of motion, of something large moving very slowly,
inexorably, turning inwards. There is no
overpainting. These paintings are very
raw and this is honest storytelling.
hide in plain sight
James Lindsay - Lance Austin Olsen
Deluge Contemporary Art
January 29 to February 27, 2016
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