MIXED MEDIA
FROM HERE TO ETERNITY
lngleby Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sat 24 July 000”
It’s not often that a piece of art can catch you so completely off guard that you’re moved to tears. But James Turrell’s light projection, Prado Red, does it. A rectangle of cold, red light glows in a dark room. Its purity creates an intense, deep blackness around the edges so that you feel as if you could reach out your hand and your fingers would spill though into the world beyond. But it takes a while. The looking and becoming absorbed is a form of meditation that slowly gathers in power and, with the soft whirring of the projector, evokes a profound sense of solitude. There is something of Kubrick’s 2001 here. The same ambiguity and lonely mystery that blurs beginnings and endings, time and space so that you become suddenly alerted to the wonder and terror of existence. The light is a blankness but also possibility. It calls to mind ‘Postcript’, a poem by Seamus Heaney: ‘You are
neither here nor there . . . And find the heart unlatched and blow it open.’
The lngleby Gallery’s aim was to
PAINTING DAVID KIELY
Lloyd Jerome Gallery, until Sat 17 Jul 000‘-
David Kiely's new work is unsettling. The paintings on show here reveal him caught in a transition from abstraction to figurative work. a shift he seems to be approaching tentatively. if not quite apologetically. Although Ede/ is a portrait of a woman. the eye is drawn not to the central figure but the thick horizon line and hastily applied swirls of cloud in the sky. Similarly, All Day is a landscape showing a clapboard shack. but it is the thick planes of brown and yellow that Kier wants us — dares us. even — to look at. It is almost as if he is using these newly introduced human and architectural forms as compositional, rather than representational. elements — dipping a toe in figurative waters. but unable to dive in and wash off the abstract expressionist vocabulary he
show art that makes us look beyond the here and now to something somewhere else. It has succeeded. While Turrell’s piece is undoubtedly the most powerful, there are works by Garry Fabian Miller that inspire awe in the tiny detail of nature. He uses leaves as transparencies, fixing their every tiny fibre, colour, shape and texture onto photographic paper: veins fan out from the stem,
has developed in past practice. When Kier sticks to his
old ways. the canvases fall flat. edging close to pastiche: when he attempts a full-blown figurative piece. it fails to
convince. (Jack Mottram)
MIXED MEDIA
James Turrell - Prado Red 1967
threading in ever-finer threads to the tips of the Ieaf’s edge. And on the gallery’s main floor 49 sticks are scattered and arranged to form Richard Long’s Somerset Willow Line, while three prints by Vija Celmis of the night sky keep you working between the ideas of earthly design and infinite abstraction. It is a brave show that so completely fulfils its ambitions. (Ruth Hedges)
Hanneline Visnes — Brown Paradise Portal, 2004
HANNELINE VISNES doggerfisher, until Sat 10 Jul 0...
Hanneline Visnes is unnerving. In the Flowers appears to be a delicate floral pattern taken from a Persian tile. copied painstakingly by the artist in oil onto board. It is the first piece you see on entering the first solo show by this Norwegian- born artist who lives in Glasgow. In the Flowers is Eastern in origin but it has more than a passing similarity to the wallpapers of William Morris. socialist designer and craftsman. It looks like a simple celebration of how the sacred is still present in the everyday in the religious East with a tacit admission that this no longer seems possible in the secular West. But it is more than that. Hidden within one repeat of the pattern is a huddle of eyes peering back.
It is an unsettling experience that is repeated throughout several media: an abstract splurge of blue acrylic called Ocean View is augmented by black diagrams of fjords from her native NOrway and cabalistic doodles. a delicate rose above a black shadow that has not. in fact. been detailed in pencil but scribbled in biro. Throughout this fascinating exhibition. art as decoration and art as a release of potentially destructive forces are juxtaposed in frequently shocking fashion. The Paradise Square of the title. incidentally. is in Baghdad. It was the home of the largest statue of Saddam Hussein until it was torn down. (Tim Abrahams)
i colour and scored finger
of the paintings by serving
Art
PRINTMAKING ALAN DAVIE PETER LVNc’H, JILL BENNET
Edinburgh Printmakers, until Sat 17 Jul 0.
When painters take on the challenge of printmaking. their trademark style is often subverted by the process of making a print. leaving only residual traces of their artistic character. But that's not the case here. Three artists currently on display at the Edinburgh Printmakers have all created prints reproducing their painting style.
Alan Davies black and white prints are the usual busy manifestations of his imagination and interest in the mythical magic of ancient cultures. The heavy freeform patterns. while enjoyable. are difficult to traverse as the viewer wanders across and around the image. trying to understand and trying not to assume that everything is phallic.
Peter Lynch - Having the same picture as your neighbour (blue)
Peter Lynch's work, by contrast. is so completely devoid of shape or pattern that you struggle to find a reason or an attachment to the work. There is no hook to reel the viewer in. Although his paintings are fabulously titled. the blank
marks do nothing to inspire the viewer. His series of prints titled Having the same picture as your neighbour at least breaks the monotony
as a pastiche on our lkea culture where all have the same items.
Jill Bennett's work focuses on the pigeon houses in Greece and works hard to capture the atmosphere and tonality of the area. The prints resemble delicate watercolours and are technically adept but do not ignite enough interest or excitement. Essentially the whole exhibit lacks verve.
(Isabella Weir) 1924 Jun 2004 THE LIST 89