Art Review.com, ‘First View’ by Laura McLean-Ferris, 26 November 2009
Visible Invisible: Against the Security of the Real
Parasol Unit, London
25 November - 7 February
Bridget Riley describes her mother thus: “She was always pointing out colours: in the sea; the sparkle of
dew: changes of colour when the dew was brushed away. If she arranged anything on the table like a bowl
of fruit […] she would point out the colours. ‘Look it’s almost got a blue on it.’* She wasn’t a painter, she
was a ‘looker’. The pleasure that one could get from looking was part of her personality.” Riley’s mother
and I have this in common. Visible Invisible: Against the Security of the Real, just opened at Parasol Unit in
London, is an exhibition irresistible to lookers, because they are made to feel important – more important,
perhaps, than they actually are – rewarded, intrigued and thwarted by looking, and looking long. The
exhibition features four youngish painters: Katy Moran, Maaike Schoorel, Cecily Brown and Shaun McDowell,
and one older, more established sculptor, Hans Josephsohn.
Hans Josephsohn, Untitled, 1995/1996
Josephsohn’s sculptures, in fact, seem to have a grounding influence on the rest of the exhibition. His
sculptures are made by sculpting soft plaster into brass, accounting for their textured, almost painterly
detail and range of shades. Their bobbling surface sometimes appears like impasto, within which one sees
the kind of imagery and sensations that are reflected in the works of the painting that surround his
sculptures. They are hulking, large figures based on the human body in various states of becoming, but
occasionally one sees eyes and mouths peering out from a shape that is barely a body, barely a human,
barely a shape.
Katy Moran, Nature Boy, 2007
Katy Moran’s small paintings feature whips of colour that suggest both the bodily and the pastoral;
browns, greens and blues occasionally suggest landscape and, at other times eyes, hair and skin. The
activity in the paintings, quick and gestural, are fairly low in incidence so that delicate flicks and sweeps
have room to breathe. Lady Things (2009), is painted in pale dove greys, fawns and blues, with some
ripped collaged paper elements that appear to have been stuck down and then ripped off tearing the fibres
apart, leaving only fragments of an image. Darker elements of the painting are framed within an arch
shape, which creates a second frame, around which the paint is a lighter whitish. This arch looks like it
could be a church window or a wedding arch, and, with the combination of the title, with its connotation of
lacy lady frippery, and hues that might be bridal gowns or hair turning white, one begins to imagine a
range of imagery to look for within the paint. But what about the shapes that the eye makes out alone,
without the aid of title and colour, the cloudy figures, the interior scenes – a door, a wardrobe? Looking
closer still (and the paintings' small scale demands this), the fat brush strokes loaded with several
shades at once, brushed quickly and expressively, make their presence felt. In and out of focus, these are
visual games that one is involved with in this exhibition as a whole, tracking different paths of
interpretation, and back again.
Shaun McDowell, Untitled, 2009
Most expressive, perhaps, is Sean McDowell, whose works, rather than having titles as hooks, have
contexts. A series of paintings in this exhibition were inspired his relationship with his partner, who he
brought into the studio in order to transform her presence – emotional, physical, abstract and not – into
paintings. Of all the artists in this exhibition, McDowell’s perhaps sing with the brightest, most vividly
handled colour, and, one infers, emotion. They have more of an ‘all-over’ feel that the others too, bright
pinks, blues and reds are repeated so that each canvas feels evenly weighted. These paintings and pastels
seem as hot as many of the others do cool and considered. It occasionally looks as though the artist has
clawed the painting with his fingers (marks appear in streaks of three and four), pawing the image like a
body.
Maaike Schoorel, Roger h, 2009
In the case of Maaike Schoorel, I feel more inclined to suggest that her painting finds more ‘security’ from
the abstract, than from the ‘real’ as the exhibition's title suggests. Schoorel’s paintings are fairly large
pale paintings that are extremely low in visual incidence. From a distance they appear to be almost
completely white, or pinkish white paintings, on which flecks of coloured light paint gleam in lemon, apple
green and rose pink. After looking for some time however, once begins to make out figures and images
from the delicate flecks of paint, which seem to stand in for the way that light falls on a subject. The
subject matter, along with the imagery, and the pastel colours however, occasionally feels a little cloying
– sleeping children in bed, gardens and tealights, for example, forcing the viewer to imagine what this
painting would be like if it was not so stripped back. It’s abstraction, it seems, that does the rescue work
here, although they are enjoyable paintings, particularly when they have less distinct, or a more ambivalent
subject matter.
Cecily Brown, Aujourd'hui Rose, 2005
Cecily Brown, on the other hand, takes a similar subject matter, linked to the kitschy delights that one can
receive from certain Impressionist paintings, and runs straight into battle with it. One can make out girls
on swings, puppies and women at dressing tables in her paintings here, though the execution is as bold as
Schoorel’s is light. Particularly compelling are a series of Untitled small paintings that relate to a large
painting Aujoud’hui Rose (2005). This painting murkily depict one of the classic Vanitas illusion
photographs, in which two little girls playing with a dog appear as a skull. While the skull as an image
has become the most heavy-handed shorthand for death in painting, in the smaller studies, the skull shifts
and changes, as different elements of the painting shift colour and content. Occasionally it disappears all
together, and one can only see the little girls, in a sea of bright boudoir pink, or in blotchy colours that
recall Renoir’s Umbrellas, or Degas’s theatrical paintings. In another, the skull is back, as a woman in a
high-necked Victorian dress inspects herself in a ghostly grey mirror, her reflection providing the second
head to convey the skull’s eyes. This image is transformed in another painting with floral colouring, that
suggests a lingerie advert, perhaps, as a woman with a tiny waist in a racy bodice plays with the things
on her dressing table. Is that a black servant coming in with flowers? Is this Manet’s Olympia? Or are we
seeing things? The high stakes art historical games are there, waiting to reward lookers, if they want them.
*Bridget Riley, Personal Interview with Nikki Henriques (1988), published in The Eye’s Mind: Bridget Riley
Collected Writings 1965-2009 (London, Thames & Hudson, 2009)