YOUR FOOT IN MY FACE and other tectonic strategies

Kingsgate Project Space,
Kingsgate Workshops,
110-116 Kingsgate Rd,
London NW6 2JG

August 14th – September 4th, 2021

“Come in, come in,” cried the old man. He was radiant with delight… Porbus and Poussin, burning with eager curiosity, hurried into a vast studio. Everything was in disorder and covered with dust, but they saw a few pictures here and there upon the wall. They stopped first of all in admiration before the life-size figure of a woman partially draped. “Oh! Never mind that,” said Frenhofer; “that is a rough daub that I made, a study, a pose, it is nothing. These are my failures,” he went on, indicating the enchanting compositions upon the walls of the studio […]

[S]aid Poussin, coming once more toward the supposed picture. “I can see nothing there but confused masses of colour and a multitude of fantastical lines that go to make a dead wall of paint.”

Frenhofer looked for a moment at his picture […] He sat down and wept.

Honoré de Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece, 183

A painter picks up a brush, pulls it through one of the increasingly disordered deposits of wet colour arrayed across an impromptu palette. Stops. Looks back at the small canvas hastily nailed to the studio wall and steadily coalescing into a thing that works. In the few seconds it has taken to switch brushes, to find the next colour, the painting has changed. The glaring omission in the mesh of marks so urgently in need of mending (or tending) isn’t there anymore. Or at least it isn’t as pronounced as it was. The certainty, the inevitability of the next mark has dissolved. The painter looks harder. Eyes scanning the tacky surface. Doubt crystalises. Fingers gripping the paint-tipped brush begin to twitch, imploring the brain to snap out of this impasse. The painter puts the brush back onto the palette and looks even more intently. Coloured area to coloured area, line to line. And then generally. The whole object. Eyes focussing and de-focussing. And then it appears… the problem. The gap in the play of shapes, the rupture in the rhythm of touches. The painter is certain that this isn’t quite the same awkwardness that just minutes ago was so unavoidable. But this new problem… well, dealing with this matter might still bring the whole thing together, but in a slightly different way? Anyhow, this new problem is swelling in its irritability. Quickly, the previously loaded brush is snatched-up and the colour is stroked onto the surface as if to salve a wound. Yes! Then. Another look. Eyes roaming. But drawn back and back again to this newest deposit. No! Another touch with the brush, softer, slower this time, just to articulate and complicate the immediacy of the previous hasty smear. Is it right? All the painter can see is the clanging newness, the vulgarity of these twin touches. The painter turns, grabs the rag from the table and in one movement these vain attempts at resolution are gone. The painting seems better now. Or. Were those last marks actually pretty good? The painter thinks: Was I too hasty? What have I done?... It’s okay. I can make those marks again. But will a new attempt be able to capture what those wiped marks achieved? … Maybe it’s better without those marks… That fault in the tension of the net of smudges and stripes and dots is good. The hole. The gap. That’s what the painting needs. Maybe that’s what the painting is about? More looking. More problems. More colours. More touches with the brush and wipes with the rag. More holes. Holes and gaps and weaknesses in the tension seem to bloom fresh in between each look. Are all these problems new? Were these failings here before? How did I not see these before? How many good holes can this painting use anyway? Fuck!

These are another day’s problems… In the studio next door. A painter picks up a brush, pulls it through one of the increasingly disordered deposits of wet colour arrayed across an impromptu palette. Stops. Looks back at the small canvas.

* * *