SATURATION II – Add Subtract Divide opening at the Copperfield Gallery

Rubén Guerrero, ST(Tipología), 2015 (Detail), Oil and enamel on canvas

Guillermo Mora, Mitad tú, mitad yo (Pedro), 2014, Layers of Acrylic paint piled on wooden pedestal

Alain Urrutia, The Blitz, 2015, Oil on Canvas and ratchet straps

Lios Patino, Layers of the image, 2015 HD / 16:9 / color / 6:30 min. Loop. Made using waterfall

Paint is not a dead art. Especially not when six unique Spanish artists rehash the painted form and naught but maths ensues.

After the success of the first SATURATION exhibition series, the Spanish Contemporary Art Network (SCAN) brings us their sequel act in the Copperfield Gallery.

The past century has seen a slow, almost degenerative decline in the traditional art of painting. The painted image has almost become jaded in the minds of the average contemporary artist. But six Spanish artists are boldly revisiting this in an abstract form by utilizing new technologies.

If painting is to art what Euclid is to geometry – then this exhibition glorifies the intangible. Add Subtract Divide provides us with the experimentation that our modernistic eyes so sorely crave. There is a deep emphasis on the art of layering; the works are not bound by the uniplanar visual form – paint simply applied to a canvas. The works successful blur the boundary of painting tradition.

This exhibition certainly does what it says on the tin. Expect to see an addition of paint (a sheer, bloated mass of pure acrylic in one case) as well as a subtraction and division of the materials that make up a painting. By exploring forms such as trompe l’oeil and collages, the notion of a modernist geometric painting is explored and scrutinised.  

Artists:

MARÍA ACUYO

RUBÉN GUERRERO

GUILLERMO MORA

SONIA NAVARRO

LOIS PATIÑO

ALAIN URRUTIA

SCAN

Copperfield Gallery

6 Copperfield Street, London SE1 0EP

15th July at 6:30pm

Images via Copperfield Gallery website