Piers Alsop, Lands End
A defining feature of Piers Alsop's recent paintings is the way in which the surfaces have been touched; touched with paint; touched with matter, touched with thought. This thought-as-touchhappens on and against a jute-on-jute ground. Jute is not an impartial surface that receivespaint. It inevitably leads to the paint becoming embedded into its fibres; paint sinks in and settles on top, but it never fully blankets the jute. Jute is that which lies under (hypokeimenon) but also that which ultimately persists, that which seemingly repels the paint it so readily catches in its weave. It becomes stained with pigment, enmeshed, as it's dragged across the ground.
While these are paintings that very much wear their materiality on their sleeve, there is also a due diligence to picture-making. A responsibility to thinking about two-dimensional space and how it can be inhabited. Arranging it and articulating it. Many of the paintings abide by an anterior 45-degree isometric perspective depicting walls, buildings, gardens, porticos.Perimeters, vicinities and thresholds become important terms in not only separating in from outbut giving a sensation of the 'insideness' of outside. Figure and ground collapse in on each other to create an open yet confined plain where individual elements have been finely tuned into an indispensable existence. The virtuality of the abridged image and the feckled actuality of the painted surface institute a reciprocity. No one part dominates over another. Give and take. Checks and balances. Paint belongs here, so doesn't belong there.
In Immaculate Planning a well-manicured tree stands in solitude, whilst in the distance three further trees stand together on the horizon line. These triplets are rooted to the ground but are pictorially apart from it, unlike the larger tree that is enveloped by its ground; ground as both terra firma and the ground of painting. In Cul-de-Sac, there is a similar setting up of three against one. A trio of threadbare trees are clutched in near proximity in the top left corner. Diagonally opposite, in the bottom right, a clearer-cut tree stands and…waits? It is outside, the others remain inside. Another way of defining cul-de-sac could be an impasse, a situation where advancement or agreement is unattainable. A small confrontation rather than a monumental conflict. Alsop's pictures are imbued with these low key, discreet tensions as loose architecture, miniature landscaping and mottled facades can encounter one another.
Whilst there is a capaciousness in some of the works such as Sycomore and Walled Garden, there can also be a closing-off in paintings like The Road, Curtain Call and Lands End. A potential other 'view' is promised albeit restricted or blocked off by a garden fence or a windbreaker. Or curtains that are only half-parted. There is an implication that something is on the precipice of being discovered or found out. The unoccupied chair in Crop and the blank canvas in Blue Studio anticipate an arrival; a confession, avowal or annunciation is just around the corner.
Many of the works have additional components adhered to their surface. These off-cuts of jute and strips of commercial packaging act almost as postscripts to the paintings. They become part of the painting's image but evade a true resolution having been stapled or pinned into position. Whilst the action of stapling and pinning into the jute implies more of pressured touch,the overall sensibility of these paintings is one of vulnerability. In Miraculous Discovery three buoyantly faceless green 'stumps' sit below a stapled-on patch of smeared greens and greys on black. This add-on presents something of an anomaly, almost as if it's found its way into the wrong picture and a different destination was intended. A window into another kind of (non)space. Is it the three stumps that have made the miraculous discovery of abstraction? Or is it a self-referencing title, and perhaps it is a discovery made by Alsop himself.
While these are paintings that very much wear their materiality on their sleeve, there is also a due diligence to picture-making. A responsibility to thinking about two-dimensional space and how it can be inhabited. Arranging it and articulating it. Many of the paintings abide by an anterior 45-degree isometric perspective depicting walls, buildings, gardens, porticos.Perimeters, vicinities and thresholds become important terms in not only separating in from outbut giving a sensation of the 'insideness' of outside. Figure and ground collapse in on each other to create an open yet confined plain where individual elements have been finely tuned into an indispensable existence. The virtuality of the abridged image and the feckled actuality of the painted surface institute a reciprocity. No one part dominates over another. Give and take. Checks and balances. Paint belongs here, so doesn't belong there.
In Immaculate Planning a well-manicured tree stands in solitude, whilst in the distance three further trees stand together on the horizon line. These triplets are rooted to the ground but are pictorially apart from it, unlike the larger tree that is enveloped by its ground; ground as both terra firma and the ground of painting. In Cul-de-Sac, there is a similar setting up of three against one. A trio of threadbare trees are clutched in near proximity in the top left corner. Diagonally opposite, in the bottom right, a clearer-cut tree stands and…waits? It is outside, the others remain inside. Another way of defining cul-de-sac could be an impasse, a situation where advancement or agreement is unattainable. A small confrontation rather than a monumental conflict. Alsop's pictures are imbued with these low key, discreet tensions as loose architecture, miniature landscaping and mottled facades can encounter one another.
Whilst there is a capaciousness in some of the works such as Sycomore and Walled Garden, there can also be a closing-off in paintings like The Road, Curtain Call and Lands End. A potential other 'view' is promised albeit restricted or blocked off by a garden fence or a windbreaker. Or curtains that are only half-parted. There is an implication that something is on the precipice of being discovered or found out. The unoccupied chair in Crop and the blank canvas in Blue Studio anticipate an arrival; a confession, avowal or annunciation is just around the corner.
Many of the works have additional components adhered to their surface. These off-cuts of jute and strips of commercial packaging act almost as postscripts to the paintings. They become part of the painting's image but evade a true resolution having been stapled or pinned into position. Whilst the action of stapling and pinning into the jute implies more of pressured touch,the overall sensibility of these paintings is one of vulnerability. In Miraculous Discovery three buoyantly faceless green 'stumps' sit below a stapled-on patch of smeared greens and greys on black. This add-on presents something of an anomaly, almost as if it's found its way into the wrong picture and a different destination was intended. A window into another kind of (non)space. Is it the three stumps that have made the miraculous discovery of abstraction? Or is it a self-referencing title, and perhaps it is a discovery made by Alsop himself.
Henri Matisse commented that "a thimbleful of red is redder than a bucketful". This may be fitting to bring into dialogue with Alsop's paintings. The custom in which the paint has been sparingly applied in the work seems to indicate a material frugality and prudence. A making-do with limited means, of having to cut out and stick down using whatever is to hand whilst also thinking about how it fits (or doesn't). Each painting is as an incongruous proposition, and this promptly connects to the exhibition's title Eternal Crumble, denoting incompatible states of existence, like oil and water's immiscibility. By making the painting, Alsop is concurrently un-making it. Accelerating and reversing; the impasse returns.
These are paintings that beckon us towards them. A summoning. A sense of attendance murmurs within. Their page-size physique encourages a closeness, the touched surface, speckled and coarse, encourages a further closeness, until we find ourselves in close quarters with them. On each surface, afaltering image resides having been coaxed into being. Teased. Prodded. Nudged. Possibly Alsop is saving the paint - and the painting - from itself. There is a steadfast opposition to gratuitous and virtuosic mark-making. Favouring the irresolute and the truncated, it appears as if the paintings have been drip-fed bit by bit, only given enough sustenance to survive, a decisive schema to avoid the paintings ebbing towards an unwarranted lethargy. These are pictures that are as much informed by inaction as they are by enaction. Gaps…pauses…preclusion…these are the provisions for the painting as much as oil paint, jute and staples. So too is patience. Waiting. The architecture awaits to be inhabited. The tree awaits the sunlight to reach it. The stage awaits the actors and props. Outside the painting's reality, Alsop waits too, as from a material stasis the painting slowly 'annunciates' itsown arrival. Creation as revelation. The revealing is not steady, even or coherent. It's halting and rough. Uneven and agitated. In Alsop's paintings, slow is not always smooth.
