Ian Grose: Some Assumptions by Stevenson

Ian Grose

Some Assumptions

Ian Grose

Some Assumptions

I usually spend most of my day not painting – a lot of it is spent reading and looking at pictures. My studio walls and floor are scattered with all sorts of pictures. Pictures I’ve taken or ones I’ve found, either from art history, newspapers, the internet, or wherever. After a daily process of some kind of digestion of this material, sometimes I’ll feel compelled to start a painting. I’ve learnt it’s best not to start unless I have this feeling of compulsion. Once I get started, the paintings themselves often happen quite quickly. Many paintings get thrown away. The work you’re seeing here has survived one, two, maybe three editing processes in which if I don’t feel that the visual engine inside is going to keep going then it’s not a work and I discard it.

In terms of where this particular show came from, after my last body of work I was faced with the question of how to proceed. At that point I was thinking about painting in terms of translation. I was working exclusively from photographs and when I wasn’t working from individual photographs I was working from principles I learned in photographs, treating those principles as a kind of syntax of a language which is then translated. In parallel to that, I was thinking about the idea of the immaterial. I liked the idea of a painting in front of you that suggests something that’s outside of the frame, outside the reality of the picture. In the most successful of these pictures there’s a sense of something else you can’t see that lends a sort of 3

Above Assumption (Rubens 2), 2014, oil on paper, 59 x 42.5cm Opposite, left Assumption (Veronese), 2014, oil on paper, 73.5 x 54cm Opposite, right Assumption (Del Sarto), 2014, oil on paper, 44 x 36cm

power to what you’re looking at. As it turns out, I haven’t exactly made that my thing. I tried, but eventually learnt that intending a direction isn’t a productive way to go because … the way things go ends up being very unexpected. This show is a surprise to me. I thought I had very concrete plans in terms of what was going to go into this particular room and how it was going to proceed to the next room. Obviously in making the paintings, everything changes and it doesn’t resemble what I imagined at all. My previous exhibition was smaller than this one, but in a sense it was more complex in that it was more varied, the subjects of the paintings were quite disparate, the links between them more tenuous.

I heard someone say, ‘What does a painting of a floral fabric have to do with a picture of a building falling down and what does that have to do with a still life, etc?’ – which of course is a valid question. I thought that this might be a nice mechanism to guide a response to pictures – trying to take advantage of that questioning of the relationship between two apparently dissimilar things. In a sense I feel these pictures have the most meaning in relation to each other, like I’m not exhibiting pictures but rather the spaces between them. Here there are three series, not counting a handful of miscellaneous pictures in between. I have the fabrics, the studio windows and the Assumptions. I have these discrete bodies of work, again not

intentionally. I made one picture and it produced a question, which produced another picture, etc. The fabric works have produced the most questions. I myself find them very strange and I respond to that feeling by painting. They come from pictures of prints that I found, which all represent flowers, with greater or lesser degrees of clarity. I didn’t make any of the designs – I found them and then photographed them, or else cropped them from pictures online. The first ones I made are cropped bits of photographs of friends who happened to be wearing floral fabrics. I realised that there were these complex little compositions going on. Cropping and composition are very important. There were these 5

folds, there was the local colour of the print itself in which every colour is repeated throughout, there’s an arm underneath, there’s a seam or some other interruption to the flatness. I feel kind of defiant making them, sort of cheeky, because an unknown person at some unknown time or country made it, and by some means it came into my visual realm and I cropped it out and used it as a pretext for an experiment in painting. Of course, some of these paintings don’t work and some of them seem like they’re just a copy of a print. The most interesting thing is realising that the most beautiful prints don’t make the best paintings. The criteria by which I must judge their paintable-ness have little to 6

do with their beauty or success as a print. This whole show centres upon a double meaning and a coincidence. The double meaning is in the word ‘assumption’. I was in Venice last year and visited a church called the Frari. There’s a Titian there which is really the highlight of the church; it’s right at the back, a huge picture which he painted when he was about my age. It depicts the Virgin Mary being taken up to heaven after a long life – so she doesn’t die, she just gets ‘assumed’. After seeing the Titian, I found that there’s a big tradition in Renaissance and Baroque paintings of the Assumption of Mary, and in most of them, the frame itself is rectangular at the bottom and arched at the top. I wondered why, of all genres, why

this particular one was so consistently in this irregular shape. The simple answer is that most of them are altarpieces, so it’s in a vaulted room, it’s behind the altar, so the painting fits the wall. But then I thought, why didn’t they put other genres there? Why is it so often the Assumptions that get that space? I eventually realised that the arched top represents the dome of heaven, the infinite circle, whereas the bottom of the picture is the finite, solid earth. Mary is in the middle, surrounded by these choirs of cupids; there are clouds that are transporting her up, and in Titian’s one you actually see God right at the top, kind of beckoning her. At the bottom, underneath the clouds you see the sky of the normal terrestrial earth, you see a group of people looking surprised, maybe reaching up but never touching her. There are usually two atmospheres; you can always see the ‘sky’ of heaven, which is a glowing light, golden or purple or pink. Then you see a glimpse of the prosaic ‘earth-sky’ at the bottom, in the distance. So I printed these pictures and they went into my floor scatter for a while. Soon after that I realised that the frame of my studio window was exactly the same shape as these paintings I’d been looking at. And so that’s the coincidence. The double meaning is that of ‘assumption’, as in ideas you receive or act on without questioning them that much. I sat on these things for a long time. I’m very suspicious of ‘good ideas’ and coincidences, because a lot of the time it seems that a painting can be clever without being particularly compelling, since the irresistibility of the idea can cloud my normal judgement of whether or not the work is any good, independent of the idea. Eventually I thought about

Opposite Studio Window (Night), 2014, oil on linen, 56 x 41.5cm Above Studio Window (Threshold), 2014, oil on linen, 44 x 32.5cm

Above Assumption (Vasari), 2014, oil on paper, 64 x 44cm Opposite Why u gotta be so violent, 2012, oil on Fabriano paper, 24 x 19cm

the window of my studio as a sort of threshold between the outside, normal world and the inside, my studio, which is in a sense a sanctuary in which very different rules apply. The window was the threshold between those two worlds, similar to the way these Assumption pictures were depicting two worlds, you could say the natural and supernatural, with Mary in between. In terms of trying to come to terms with abstraction in 2014, trying to be a painter, and looking at the whole span of art history – things seem to go crazy within a space of fifty years. It’s a narrative of various assumptions being thrown out the window, so to speak: art should correspond to our visual experience of the world – that gets thrown out by cubism; art should represent things in the world – that gets thrown out by abstraction, and we eventually land up with what anyone operating under previous assumptions might see as this meaningless collection of marks, which nonetheless has much cultural import for us now. It’s the apex in a certain narrative of art, in particular of painting. I kept trying to come to terms with that. When I look at the work of old painters, I always came across the dichotomy that they are trying to deal with, of the painting as a flat thing – if you touch it your hand won’t go through – and on the other hand, a transparent window into a scene, a window you can look through. I felt that throughout all the stages of painting, and including abstraction, the tension between these two ways of seeing a picture has a different quality. And with painting, unlike photography, the picture plane often really asserts itself, you can go up close and see brushstrokes, you can see something that used to be liquid, that congealed into a solid, and you can see little traces of

someone’s hand and mind – and then if you take a few steps back it resolves into another world. I’m addressing this historical tension quite explicitly and quite self-consciously, since for me it persists. It was by no means resolved, even though there were some very definitive ideas in the fifties and sixties of what a painting should be and how flat it should be. I’m thinking about Clement Greenberg, the apologist of Abstract Expressionism. I admire his writing and I go back to it often, but it’s extremely prescriptive in a way that we in 2014 wouldn’t recognise; it seems really alien to us. There’s a sense of a forward march of art history, in that something came before and there is a sort of correct chess move 9

coming next, and the whole of art history is located in that next move. So Greenberg is prescribing that the window of the painting should be abolished; you’re being dishonest to the medium by being illusionistic, by poking holes into the canvas and suggesting that there is something behind the work. Now we are in a very different stage in which, in a sense, there’s more freedom – especially after the past few decades in 10

which that linear history ‘collapsed’ and people lost the thread of what came before and what should come next. And so now we’re in a different context in which I think internal integrity is more important, given your assumptions about what art should be, which will no doubt differ from everyone else’s. I’m trying to be quite realistic in terms of what painting can actually do, in particular given

the ubiquity of photography and cinema. With photography, Arthur Danto said, it’s kind of a tie: they can both do the same thing. Painting takes a lot longer, but it’s still in question which one is able to reproduce life more accurately. But when cinema and moving pictures were introduced, painting was left in the dust; it had to figure out another identity for itself. This why I avoid narrative, because I feel – take a photograph, write a story, it will do a better job. In these small arched paintings, all of them were copied from individual pictures of the Assumption of the Virgin. It’s funny for me to see them because I spent a lot of time painting a copy of the original, always thinking that when I do the final layer I’m going to leave a lot more of the image than last time, so you can see a little glimpse of the interaction between all these figures that had great significance at the time, but which doesn’t have much meaning for me in recent painting. Again this is an assumption of mine to which I’m responding. The way in which these Renaissance paintings create meaning – the gestures and emotions, the dignified composition and the supremacy of the figure of Mary in the picture – it doesn’t mean much to me any more. I still look at these pictures and derive pleasure from them, understanding them in their historical moment, but making a painting like that now wouldn’t make sense, or it would mean something completely different. I was trying to paint the pictures and retain what does makes sense to me now, in particular the sense of these two atmospheres. After copying the pictures, I’d cover them up very quickly with a palette knife, in a way that seemed both additive and subtractive. The colours that I used on top were the colours of heaven, the sky behind

Mary. The whole picture, the composition leads up to this group of colours which is the promise of her salvation, her transcendence, her entrance into another realm. I feel like that gesture of violence can activate something in the experience of looking. You can look at Titian’s assumption of the Virgin on a smartphone and it will often mean nothing at all, other than ‘old religious painting’. A lot of the time the paintings I am making are a response to the strange situation in which I feel art seems to mean almost nothing, without the structure of a clear tradition or historical narrative. I had these experiences when I was trying to figure out the basic mechanics of how art works, taking everything in, giving everything the benefit of the doubt. I remember going to exhibitions and leaving wondering what I was supposed to be feeling, especially if the work had no immediate visual intrigue. And even if the visual intrigue was there, how was it different to fashion or advertising, which often exhibit far more advanced formalism? A lot of this work is a reaction to those questions. Transcription of the walkabout given for the Friends of the South African National Gallery at Stevenson Cape Town, 25 July 2014

Opposite Video, 2013, oil on linen, 71 x 91cm

some trees outside my studio four years ago. photo taken on 1/07/14 at 8:53

p12 Studio Window (Streetlights) 2014, oil on linen 60 x 43.5cm

p23 Dissimulation (Rayon) 2013, oil on linen 64 x 50cm

p34 Studio Window (Autumn) 2014, oil on linen 33.5 x 24.5cm

p13 Dissimulation Series 8 2014, oil on linen 92 x 79.5cm

p24 Assumption (Titian 2) 2014, oil on paper 24.5 x 16.5cm

p35 Studio Window (Vertical Blur) 2014, oil on linen 89 x 62cm

p14 Dissimulation (Last Season) 2014, oil on linen 64 x 53cm

p25 Squares 2012, oil on linen 64 x 46.5cm

p36 MoirĂŠ 2013, oil on linen 146 x 120cm

p15 Fire Door 2014, oil on linen 58.5 x 47.5cm

p27 Trees Outside My Studio Four Years Ago 2014, oil on linen 165 x 130.5cm

p38 Emperor 2014, oil on paper 22.5 x 17.5cm

p16 Assumption (Rubens 3) 2014, oil on paper 63 x 50cm

p28 Threshold 2 2014, oil on paper 29.5 x 23cm

p39 Greek Dress, Altes Museum 2014, oil on linen 72 x 62cm

p17 Refrain 2 2014, oil on linen 121 x 95.5cm

p29 Cone, Sphere, Cylinder 2013, oil on linen 62 x 44cm

p41 Shower Hider 2014, oil on linen 135 x 101cm

p18 Dissimulation (Content Aware) 2013, oil on linen 81.5 x 62cm

p31 Dissimulation Series 7 2014, oil on linen 86.5 x 77cm

p42 Lux Nova 2 2013, oil on linen 101 x 83cm

p19 Near Alexanderplatz 2012, oil on linen 130 x 86cm

p32 Dissimulation (Winterhalter) 2012, oil on linen 113 x 84cm

p43 Lux Nova 1 2013, oil on linen 101 x 83cm

p21 Study for a History Painting 2014, oil on linen 93.5 x 117.5cm

p33 Studio Window (Warm Light) 2014, oil on linen 45 x 33cm

p44 Morning 2012, oil on Fabriano paper 28 x 20cm

p22 Good Friday 2013, oil on linen 78 x 116.5cm

p34 Studio Window (Equivalence) 2014, oil on linen 40 x 29.5cm

p44 Syntax 1 2013, oil on Fabriano paper 22 x 16.5cm

p45 Assumption (Titian 3) 2014, oil on paper 63 x 47cm

p58 Double Glazing 2013, oil on linen 55.5 x 42cm

p70 Assumption (Titian 1) 2014, oil on paper 24.5 x 18cm

p46â&#x20AC;&#x201C;47 The Reconstruction of Pruitt-Igoe 2012, oil on linen Diptych, 62.5 x 82.5cm each

p61 Refrain 1 2014, oil on linen 166.5 x 142cm

p70 Assumption (Della Gatta) 2014, oil on paper 38.5 x 28cm

p48 Lavender 2012-13, oil on linen 101 x 134.5cm

p62 Studio Window (Winter) 2014, oil on linen 48.5 x 36cm

p71 Assumption (Fiorentino) 2014, oil on paper 63.5 x 49.5cm

p50 Dissimulation (Tulips) 2012, oil on linen 90 x 69cm

p63 Studio Window (Metal Halide) 2014, oil on linen 46 x 34cm

p72 Dissimulation Series 9 2014, oil on linen 98 x 75cm

p51 Syntax 2 2013, oil on Fabriano paper 22.5 x 16cm

p63 Studio Window (Sun) 2014, oil on linen 45 x 33.5cm

p73 Night Light 2014, oil on linen 58 x 45cm

p53 Dissimulation Series 11 2014, oil on linen 115 x 93cm

p64 Dissimulation (Roses) 2012, oil on linen 81.5 x 60cm

p54 Camouflage 2013, oil on linen 52 x 42cm

p65 Dissimulation (Rayon 2) 2014, oil on paper 29.5 x 23cm

p55 Frith 2012, oil on paper 24 x 18cm

p67 Threshold 1 2014, oil on linen 90 x 72.5cm

p56 Eyjafjallajokull in Three 2012, oil on linen 91 x 63cm

p68 Assumption (Rubens 1) 2014, oil on paper 36.5 x 25cm

p57 Dissimulation Series 10 2014, oil on linen 92 x 75.5cm

p69 Dissimulation (Pink with Spots) 2013, oil on linen 57 x 45cm

Ian Grose was born in Johannesburg in 1985 and lives and works in Cape Town. He completed a postgraduate diploma in painting at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, in 2010, after a BA majoring in English Literature and Art History. His final-year exhibition was widely noticed, as was his first solo exhibition, Other Things, at Blank Projects in Cape Town in 2011. He was awarded the Absa l’Atelier prize in 2011, as well as the Tollman Award for Visual Arts in that year, and spent six months in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2012. Works produced during his residency were exhibited at the Absa Art Gallery in Johannesburg in 2013, and in 2013 and 2014 he has had solo exhibitions at Stevenson, Cape Town.

CAPE TOWN Buchanan Building 160 Sir Lowry Road Woodstock 7925 PO Box 616 Green Point 8051 T +27 (0)21 462 1500 F +27 (0)21 462 1501 JOHANNESBURG 62 Juta Street Braamfontein 2001 Postnet Suite 281 Private Bag x9 Melville 2109 T +27 (0)11 403 1055/1908 F +27 (0)86 275 1918 info@stevenson.info www.stevenson.info Catalogue 80 August 2014 © 2014 for works by Ian Grose: the artist © 2014 for text: the authors Front cover Greek Dress, Altes Museum, 2014, oil on linen, 72 x 62cm Page 1 Veil, 2014, oil on paper, 17 x 17cm Page 2 My shadow in the studio, 2012, oil on Fabriano paper, 65 x 51.5cm Art direction & design Gabrielle Guy Design & layout James King Photography Mario Todeschini Printing Hansa Print, Cape Town