Johannesburg

STEVENSON is pleased to present the third instalment of Monochrome Paintings by Zander Blom. The artist writes:

Monochrome III: Thank You Gravity (and Students from Hong Kong)

There’s been a change in the studio. Either it’s a tiny insignificant event, or it’s a seismic shift that will lead in all sorts of directions. I don’t know where I stand yet and maybe it’s too early to tell. I have to paint my way through it. But let’s chat about it because I need a text for the exhibition - like yesterday.

When I think about gravity in a painting, I think about the weight or mass of shapes, and about how they sit on top of one another, how they weigh on or support one another. Forms can be floating in the air, or crashing around in a room, or about to teeter off the edge of a cliff. The possibilities are endless. Shapes can be static or swirling, tethered tightly or loosely or not at all. Something can be light as a feather blowing in the wind, or as heavy as a tank crushing the world under it. Maybe gravity can even be so strong that it forces a whole composition to implode in on itself? We don’t only see a composition with our eyes but feel it with our bodies. Maybe the art of rock balancing is so compelling because we know what it’s like to fall. Who hasn’t fallen? Down some stairs, off a bicycle or chair. Don’t they also say that walking is just falling and catching yourself? Maybe a pile of rocks can be so beautiful because they return us to the fragile precariousness of our own existence. We feel the gravity in our bodies, retain the memory of falling almost physically inside ourselves. I have a healthy respect for gravity. I’m not very fond of heights. I feel like the edge of a big drop is always whispering, trying to pull a person closer like a siren from a fable.

A month or two ago a group of students came over for a studio visit. I talked to them about the paintings in the room and then paged through some of my books, showing them the evolution of my work over the last twenty-odd years. From ink drawings and prints to photographs of installations haphazardly constructed with cardboard and other cheap materials in my bedroom to various styles of oil painting. Then I did a little demonstration of the monochrome techniques with my silicone tools so they could understand how the paintings are made physically. One of the students asked why I only paint flat on the floor or on a table but not vertically with the canvas leaning against the wall. I explained that my paint mixtures these days are diluted with a lot of turpentine and linseed oil so if I were to work upright the paint would run down the canvas. I also explained that I have a soft spot for drips and swirls like Jackson Pollock made, where the paint was flung at a canvas on the floor, but didn’t think that I would like paint dripping straight down because to my mind it would have such a specific feeling or connotation. ‘Vertical drips can be quite corny,’ I thought, and maybe said. But then, partly because I was now curious and partly because I wondered whether my answer made any sense to them, I said ‘Let’s try it and see what happens.’ So I attached a small piece of loose canvas to a board and propped it up on the studio bin. I made a few marks, worked into them a bit with my trusty tools and stood back. What I expected to happen happened, yet I felt differently about the drips of running paint than anticipated. I actually quite liked the effect. Once the students left I did a few more experiments. Quickly I stopped limiting myself to my usual silicone tools and started smearing into the paint with pieces of cloth soaked in turpentine, mostly straight down the canvas in a vertical motion from top to bottom. It just felt right, and the cloth gave a much softer gradient/ombré effect than any silicone tool. I could now obscure and reveal marks, creating an effect that sometimes feels like curtains of light in a forest and at other times like vines visible through a waterfall. Some paintings seem calm and soothing, others violent and chaotic. None of them are static, there is so much movement. The new addition of vertical drips and smears allowed for a subtle shift in the monochrome works in general. Despite my preconceived notions, these drips turned out to be something I can really work with. Looking around the studio now, most of the recent works were made upright with drips and smears, and with each new painting another subtle variation has suggested itself into existence.

I realised recently that there has been an undeniable relationship to depth, gravity and suggested three-dimensionality in most of my work over the last twenty years. When you consider it from this angle, everything connects. From the linocut collages of concentric circles made up of targets, to the photographs of black shapes floating in the corners of my old Brixton bedroom, to the abstract paintings on raw Belgian linen with the oil-stain halos around thick chunks of paint and marbling techniques, to the monochrome work. Through all of this I simply haven’t been drawn to pure flatness in the Greenbergian tradition. Perhaps I just couldn’t ever bring a painting to life following this dogma?

The full text will be available in the publication accompanying Monochrome Paintings.

The exhibition opens Saturday 2 November from 10am to 1pm.