Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
B16 Gallery, Birmingham 17 June – 22 July
Reviewed by: Nigel Prince
Flat planes of muddied colour, thinly scrubbed and partially over-painted, some masked, others freehand, combine in multifaceted spatial arrangements to create a show of stale air. Everything is drab in the world of Stuart Purdy, where corners are worn and surfaces a little dirty with use; colours are combined in what seem oddly garish relationships. Scrabble, the earliest piece in the show, gives the game away. The faceted forms recall TV quiz show sets – long after people have gone home, or architectural elements from some 30s bingo hall where colours have been exposed for too long under hot lights and everything is faded, with a layer of dusty grime. But this is telling us something we already know: tinsel town has lost its sparkle and old-time glamour just isn't what it used to be. The worn surfaces read like Wayne Thiebaud's painting but without the juiciness, or like Richard Diebenkorn's without the Californian light.
A number of pieces are placed deliberately to create a tension in the space and to establish a physical relationship with the viewer. This begins to expand their potential in the language of painting. 10,000 is propped across a corner of the room, echoing the partition-like structure of its image and making us confront the space in front of the painting rather than the illusory quality of its pictured surface. Polyclinic is tucked high into the left-hand corner of a room, its placement seeming a little arbitrary. 16 holds promise positioned so as to almost graze the floor. A grid format reminiscent of the game-show Celebrity Squares rises from its bottom edge, forcing the image to simultaneously flip between a three-dimensional structure and the flatness of the picture plane. The painterly surface has drips and runs and areas of barely covered brown linen; with sickly but sumptuous colour combinations – lilac on mauve, emerald on hot pink. Within grids veering from processed pea to bright green, sit olive blocks on royal blue, topped with a zip of orange and lime. Turquoise 'T' forms hang above. The ground is scrubbed from crimson to maroon to powder pink and sits on the surface like badly rouged cheeks. The lights have gone down and the glow behind the structure tells us it's time to go.
Writer detail:
NIGEL PRINCE
is an artist and curator
Venue detail:
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