IVAN SEAL – IN HERE STANDS IT
2012-10-15Ostensibly working within the tradition of the still life, Seal’s small-scale paintings complicate orthodox depictions of the inanimate objects with which we surround ourselves. His body of work constitutes a lexicon of sorts, a vocabulary of matter brought to life. At Spike Island, the paintings are shown alongside computer-generated sound works, whose structure and rhythm are akin to the flow of canvases on the gallery wall.
Seal’s subjects sit in shallow, ambiguous spaces often demarcated only by a gradual shift in colour or shade, or a simple horizon line. These settings often share their colouration with the objects they contain, suggesting a non-natural light source, while in others the objects clash dramatically with their lurid backdrops. Though recognisably of this world, Seal’s subjects are painted quickly from memory, and as such represent less the depicted object and more the unstable, psychologically-inflected territory within our minds.
Sculptural qualities, such as weight and gravity, are undermined by the ambiguity of the space and the materiality of the paint itself, which shifts in successive works from thickly layered crusts to thin washes of colour. Much of the pleasure of this work derives from the physicality of the paint on the surface and the sense this carries of the work’s rapid execution.
Exhibition runs through to December 9th, 2012
Spike Island
133 Cumberland Road
Bristol
BS1 6UX
