'Deep Chine'
Peter Eastman at SMAC Art Gallery Cape TownCape Town based artist, Peter Eastman has earned a reputation as an experimental painter, using a variety of techniques and media to constantly expand his practice. Eastman’s substrate of choice is aluminium, to which he applies amongst other things; chrome, enamel, resin, wax, graphite and oil paint – reworking, scraping, incising and profiling the surface to create unique paintings poised between representation and abstraction.
For Eastman, his surroundings and environment have a profound influence on his work. Subjects are taken from lived interiors, cityscapes, studio views, family photographs and landscapes that are known to him. Eastman disassembles the image and reconstitutes it to form an entirely new picture which bears a vague semblance to the original, but for the viewer there is an uncanny familiarity and connection to the content, which is suffused with opaque moods and dreamlike memory. New shapes and forms emerge through the process of gradual fragmentation. Despite his ambitious and bold employment of base-colours in the new works, Eastman’s compositions remain mostly mono- or duo-chromatic. Subtle lines and shapes are articulated by thin ridges of paint or resin which disrupt the surface, giving the works dimension and complexity in relief. This allows for different views and interpretations depending on the light and angle from which the work is approached.
In the current digital age, where technology is widely accessible and various digital image editing programs allow for infinite forms of visual manipulation, the reconfiguration of images is widespread. It is possible to produce a myriad of special effects such as blasting, blurring, pixelating and other forms of distortion which new abstract painting often attempts to interpret or mimic, resulting in superficially seductive, ‘re-modernised’ imagery. However, these works lack some of the intangible qualities which lie at the heart of real painting. Peter Eastman’s paintings retain a painterly quality where the sensitivity, brushstroke, touch and feel of the artist are inherent to the work, thereby transcending the intriguing technical innovations which are in themselves original and distinct.
08 May - 21 June
