'Thrown Together'
Simon Stone at SMAC Art Gallery Cape TownSimon Stone’s new series of paintings portrays a personal exploration of elusive memories, dreams and recollections - the silhouette of a receding landscape, framed cityscapes, lone figures or female forms, distinctly recurring motifs, lines, holes, slices and brief stops. Compositionally the paintings are split and fragmented, divided into a series of singular conversations and moments caught in their own time. Simple and complex, the paintings are other-worldly and magical, while remaining quietly every-day.
Stone explains his creative process: ‘I do not think about meaning, it comes out in the end, what is meaningful to me…I spot something and I take it further’.
As the exhibition title suggests, ideas are ‘thrown together’. Seemingly unrelated objects, people and places, each with their own identity and meaning for the artist are placed together on the canvas - intuitively structured and fluidly executed in ‘the way it had to happen’ so that‘it could not have been anything else’. There is a juxtaposing of separate ideas and visual commentaries, but these are tied together and threaded by the artist in his own internalised vocabulary and library of references. Unconsciously or not, Stone’s selection is very clear to him. His ‘visual message’ is meticulously assembled.
08 December - 31 January













