|
| At
a certain distance Philip Watkins Sutton Gallery 15 March - 9 April, 1997 Melbourne |
||
Philip Watkins, |
Of particular
interest to Philip Watkins is 'that moment of looking ...
where painted shadow and light coincide with actual
shadow and light", that is, "where the fiction
of representation ends and the fact of the surface
or support begins." To this end Watkins has been painting trompe l'oeil for several years now but in his recent show that climactic moment of the eye's deception is no longer momentary at all; it endures. In fact the visual trickery can no longer really be called a deception since we never emerge from the illusion. Perhaps it's truer to speak of the complete failure of vision brought on by Watkins' paintings since the capacity to see never fully recovers from the experience of his work. Ostensibly, the canvas is folded and creased, drawn tight about - or just subtly cloaking - some underlying form. The stretchers seem to buckle and bend, distended by various forces acting upon the picture surface from in font and behind. The throw of light and contrasting colour highlight these reticulated surfaces which shimmer like shot silk. Yet these surfaces are completely flat (to touch them was the final test since my eyes would not vouch for it). Further there is no single light source in accord with the lights and shadows of the fabric. Through skill and technique appearances are riven from their material support. The canvases were no doubt once folded about the forms in Watkins' studio. Spray paint fell upon their heaving and folded forms like rays of golden afternoon light. Indeed, paint became light and recorded itself in the manner of photography. The formal process may have been complicated or simple but the effect is astonishing. Even in looking hard at the paintings they often fail to resolve as either a matter of illusion or material composition. Instead the image evaporates through the act of perception into a pure optical effect, and the original moment of deception (the trompe l'oeil) is drawn out into a rather worrying duration in which the ability to see seems completely ineffectual to the task of looking at art. The sensory counterpart to such optical effect is perhaps a kind of delirium, similar to the experience of a mirage. One might try and rationalise this confusion; with each quick blink, bringing conceptual or formal concerns to bear upon the retinal experience. Yet, it's this interstice between fact and fiction so artfully exploited by Watkins which is the source of a genuine pleasure - a pleasure of looking with no certainty and no certain idea about how these paintings have been made. This is an exciting place for the mind and eye; perhaps more of a period or duration in which oscillation between the senses is perfectly stalled. |
|
Philip Watkins, untitled,
|
||
Philip Watkins, Installation |
||
| Stuart Koop May, 1997 Photos: K
Pleban |
||
