Current Review(s)
Assume Nothing – The painting of Ian Grose
Ian Grose at STEVENSON in Cape TownIn Ian Grose’s ‘Dissimulation’ series of paintings, he renders folded and patterned cloth. From a distance it looks like drapery, each fold revealed not exclusively through shadow but through the distortion of pattern. Closer up, it dissolves into formlessness. But the dissolution is exquisite. In Dissimulation Series 9 for instance, a rather 60s colour combination of muted lilacs and mustards is given life through shimmery scumbles and select application of opacity. Dissimulation Series 7 feels rapid, yet the paint, in its peachy hues and desaturated purply blues, is lustrous and sensual. These paintings show both the pleasure of an painted surface, and of an artist in perfect control of his medium.
22 July 2014 - 23 August 2014
Listings(s)
'This Must Be The Place'
Ian Grose, Leigh Tuckniss, George Chapman and Abigail Harper at Brundyn'This Must Be the Place' is a group exhibition featuring new work by recent graduates of the Michaelis School of Fine Art. The show functions as a platform for contemporary explorations of traditional media rather than as a mandate for unity, with the artists expanding upon their work in the fields of painting, printmaking and drawing. Having few common thematic concerns and no narrative coherence, the exhibition, like the Talking Heads song from which it borrows its name, takes the non-sequitur as its framework and strategy. Having no right to designate effects, and no power to determine results, the artists approach the show as one would a de facto cohabitation: a place in which to come together, allowing difference to produce something new, before ultimately drifting apart.
04 April 2011 - 27 April 2011
'Alptraum'
Ed Young, Ian Grose, Wim Botha, Ruth Sacks, Linda Stupart, Zander Blom and Various Artists at Deutscher KunstlerbundLike George Orwell with his 'Room 101' in his predictive tale 1984, we all have our own version of what constitutes a nightmare, and for this reason, the project has been opened to a large number of artists whose many and varied personal nightmare versions, or visions, act to reflect this hugely variable human state of fears and fobias, pain and panic. 'Alptraum', the German for 'nightmare', is an artist-led project. It is a model which utilizes global communication between localized artist hubs and clusters to form an international grouping with the intent of opening a dialogue about this subject across borders and cultures in order to delve into the stuff and mind-murk that is collectively shared or completely random and unrelated, or individual and specific within the syndrome of 'The Nightmare'. Each artist draws on their own personal experience in order to visualize those anxieties, which take them beyond everyday dreams.
Working within the remit of the ‘artist-curated project’, all of the works in 'Alptraum' have been restricted in size and material in order to facilitate the low-cost postal transportation of the show from country to country. With each exhibition site taking responsibility to pass the show on to the next host, the number of works and artists may change or grow, and the approach to interpreting and hanging the show vary from space to space as the body of works meanders on from country to country. Having started in Washington DC and transferred to London, the exhibition is currently showing in Berlin. It will travel to Los Angeles next, followed by its arrival at blank projects in Cape Town. The Berlin iteration extends the exhibition to include the work of 19 South African artists, such as Sanell Aggenbach, Zander Blom, Ian Grose, Ruth Sacks, Linda Stupart, Wim Botha and Ed Young.
11 March 2011 - 15 April 2011
'Other Things'
Ian Grose at blank projectsThat translation incurs a loss of detail or meaning is unremarkable. The interest is in the nature of the remnant, the new thing.
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In painting from existing images, and understanding myself as a translator of visual material, I have tried to find the embedded counterpoint to the loss of translation, and even the poetry of that loss. This function of painting finds allegories in my subject matter, which serve to represent it: the traces of the departed (whether creases in linen or apparitions), a pregnant absence, an empty room or car filled if only by the products of longing.
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If paint itself can function as a signifier of its practice and history, then in erasing an object or person it is also acting as its proxy. It is the substance (and daily practice) that fills the void.
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Painting, having died and stuck around, is also a ghost.
-Ian Grose
11 May 2011 - 11 June 2011