11/03/13
Leon Chew: Asphalt
Black
Payne Shurvell
22 February – 13
April 2013
“This is an exhibition constructed for photography,”
explains artist Leon Chew (born 1975) of his current show, Asphalt Black. “It
speaks a lot of photography, but also attempts to test the limits of the
discipline.” Indeed, alongside a series of eight prints on purpose-cut
black mirror sheets; a single, limited edition, authorised installation shot of
the exhibition, Reproduction; and a further
limited edition, Barstow Site 1, from which
the whole show was born, the gallery is filled predominantly by two painted
shapes spanning the floor, end wall, and ceiling, and a strip of fluorescent
lighting along one wall, creating a “horizon” which reverberates around the
room. These elements are, however, as Chew says, intrinsically related to the
camera: as Reproduction shows, from a single point in the gallery, and
through the viewfinder lens (the effect doesn’t work anywhere near as well with
the naked eye), the curious looming shapes of Anamorphic (Black Sun) and
Anamorphic (Trapezoid) appear, respectively, to form a perfect circle and
a shaft of silvery light cutting across the room.
