| Century Gallery Nov 27-Dec 7, 2002 |
 | home |
| Interesting and Successful |
Stefan Bottenberg, Damon Summersgill,
Geoff Swan paintings | space 2 |
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 Damon Summersgill |
 Geoff Swan |
Geoff Swan writes:
We are three painters who have interacted throughout the last decade without as yet having shown together, despite our obvious affinities. However, having each now built up a substantial body of work, we have decided to remedy said situation by exhibiting together. Our work is characterised by a common commitment to the figurative, by the use of snapshots and images culled from the media and by a focus on the more usual elements of the everyday. Whilst being aware of contemporary art discourse we would tend to reject it as a motivation in itself for the work of art, preferring instead to focus on the sensual, healing, and meditative functions that art has performed for human beings throughout human history. |
It is this latter meditative aspect in particular that
we would see as uniting the sometimes disparate elements of our work
in much the same way as say, for example, the seemingly dichotomous elements
of the work of Edward Hopper are united by key elements within his thought.
For behind the ordinariness of sheds, Belgian villas, and pets of Stefan's
work; the brooding seascapes, domestic 'genre paintings', and nervous
benignity of Damon's work; the cars, weaponry, and industrial gothic
of my own work lies what I would describe as a form of non-discursive
surrealism, evidences of a generalised practice of allowing the psychological
underlay of the ordinary to emerge via the tension between a deliberately
unsophisticated, limited input and a total openness to the dictates of
the paint surface. |
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