23/01/13
Jonathan Gabb: SYSTEM
WW Gallery
9 January – 2
February 2013
Part of the prize for winning the WW SOLO Award 2012 was a
three-month residency in the gallery’s studio, and Jonathan Gabb, selected from
over 300 entries, made good use of this time to perfect his “SYSTEM”. Using a
carefully balanced combination of PVA glue and acrylic paints – the precise
measures of which only he knows – this sculptural painter creates vast sheets
of pure colour in huge trays on the studio floor. Once dry, he cuts them into fringed
strips, and hangs them from ceilings, skylights, and walls, like canopies and
curtains, intertwining and tying individual strands to one another, and creating
a panoply of colour. Tantalisingly begging to be touched and wandered amidst, these
works need not only to be admired from all different viewpoints, but also just
looked at head on and absorbed, as they absorb the viewer in return.
Standing beneath prime
titanium 4, I feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland after she has drunk the
potion which shrinks her. It is as if I have landed inside an enormous party
popper, amongst the myriad multi-coloured streamers. Cascading from the
skylight in the ceiling, there is a desire to climb upwards, ascending the
refracted colours of the primary spectrum – red, blue and yellow – to the pure
light which merges with the white strands above.
Across the room, on either side of the partition door, hang
two curtains, one blue, one yellow, but both also with white at the top (parsing: prussian blue + white and parsing: cadmium yellow + white
respectively). Here, rather than appearing as a light source, this upper
section seems almost bleached of its colour, as if its very vitality had
drained downwards to the dull grey ground, like electricity rushing to its
earth.
Some strands are different colours on different sides too,
and then there is also the interaction of natural light, flooding into the
gallery, which makes everything appear different at different times of day. All
of this was a new adventure for Gabb, whose New Cross studio has no windows at
all.
The strands, which are thicker than one would expect, and
surprisingly enduring, if still delicate, have a sense of presence, whilst
remaining unimposing. They are “outlined” on the walls and floors by frames (the
edge of the sheets of colour from which they were cut, but remain umbilically
attached), demarcating their space, an imaginary support, their backbone, or
their do-not-cross line.
Whether you experience these pieces as unwanted output from
a shredder, crazy-coloured, man-sized tagliatelli, or the rotating sponges of a
carwash, they certainly offer a full on perceptual assault. They call out to be
danced amongst like streamers, and the overwhelming evocation is one of carnival
and theatre, of celebration of some kind. And, indeed, that is exactly what they
are: a celebration of paint and colour, pure and simple.
Images:
Jonathan Gabb: SYSTEM at WW Gallery
Installation shots
Photos: Anna McNay
© the artist and WW Gallery