Michael Cusack, New paintings, August 21- September 14, Olsen Gallery
The exhibition’s title could unofficially be called the ruins of ideas, which is the name of a painting in the show. I have adapted this term from Anthony Uhlmann discussing Samuel Beckett’s novel Molloy
Over the years I have focussed mainly on shape making, playing out various painterly problems and solutions on the surface of my paintings, focussing on push and pull of shapes in relation to one another During this process compositions and ideas are painted, erased and replaced by new layers.
Making and unmaking marks and shapes is not unlike a musician or a writer laying down notes and words. The rhythm of the painting then evolves through this ongoing studio investigation and a composition arrives and a dialogue begins with the work.
More recently I have shifted that focus from primarily shape making to something more like corruptions and complications of the painted surface, hence my reference to layers and ruins This has come out of my interest in painting’s role as both image and object, and the process of tugging more vigorously at the relationship between ideas and materials
While the work is abstract in essence it can also be read as documentation of the transformation of experience into painterly form, of how materials work to trigger some kind of opening or enable an ongoing dialogue with the work. At some point the painting becomes an object and lives independently of its subject, independently of me.
Essentially what I mean by the ruins of ideas is all the many forms the paintings arrive at before they become an object separate from me.
