ANIMA MUNDI, ST IVES
A small exhibition of white wall sculptures in the downstairs gallery at Anima Mundi, St Ives .
White
The beauty of white is in the purity of its shadows. These are not the velvety depths of chiaroscuro, but an illuminated shade concealing a fugitive light. Shadows on white are brittle and crisp ,delicate and precise. They reveal rather than conceal.
A white form encourages association. This is a language of connections and archetypes, a mountainside is a ridge of sand, the vein of a dried leaf, the glint and gleam of shallow water. Immense weight and weightlessness, in the same breath.
These sculptures stem from my love of English landscape painting. I am looking for the white of Turners blinding vortex of light, or the pearlescent glow of Constables cloud studies.
I feel the strong sense of timelessness associated with white, it is both contemporary and ancient. White has a quality of absence and the capacity to envelop and define. White is simultaneously what is, and what is not.
White can hold a form and keep it balanced on the edge of infinity.
Simon Allen
“I have overcome the lining of the colored sky, torn it down and into the bag thus formed, put colour, tying it up with a knot. Swim in the white free abyss, infinity is before you.”
Kazimir Malevich on his painting, Suprematist Composition :White on White
“White has a tendency to make things visible. With white, you can see more of a nuance; you can see more.”
Robert Ryman
“White is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black”
GK Chesterton