Exhibition statement for WHITE( Anima Mundi 2016 )
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 Turner's blinding vortex of light, or the pearlescent glow of Constable's 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