Nau mai, haere mai, welcome to EyeContact. You are invited to respond to reviews and contribute to discussion by registering to participate.

JH

Schematic Ingram

AA
View Discussion
Simon Ingram's Interview with a painting at Gow Langsford Simon Ingram, Corner Stop, 2013, acrylic on linen, 1080 x 1080 mm Simon Ingram, Timed Drop, 2013, acrylic on linen, 700 x 700 mm Sinon Ingram, Giotto #2, 2013, acrylic on linen, 1400 x 1400 mm Simon Ingram, Loosely Packed Squares, 2013, acrylic on linen, 1400 x 1400 mm Simon Ingram's Interview with a painting at Gow Langsford Simon Ingram, Tightly Packed Squares, 2013, acrylic on linen, 700 x 700 mm Simon Ingram's Interview with a painting at Gow Langsford

Their dragged but tidy lines of paint, with their internal streaks, ragged stop/start smudges, and wobbly linear rhythms provide an odd foil that counters the expected impeccable finish of most schematic art like this. Such linear imperfections are just as important to the attentive viewer as the possible sequences of drawn shape elements or grid lines.

Auckland

 

Simon Ingram
Interview with a painting

 

10 July - 28 July 2013

It’s an interesting notion to regard a painting on a wall as a sentient being, a living creature with powers of cognition. It seems to be a trend now to ascribe personality traits to inanimate art objects. I notice across the Tasman, Andre Hemer is calling his current exhibition New Smart Objects, implying his exhibited endeavours are smart - ie. mentally active: intelligent - and perhaps not himself. Not their creator.

So back to Simon Ingram and this show in Kitchener St., who is interviewing whom? What’s generating the paint application process here? Which chicken? What egg? Do artists come from paintings and not the other way around? Could that be possible? Is that the point?

Ingram’s five paintings - their marks made by his Lego held/robot-controlled paintbrushes - are diagrammatic with marks usually drawn in short bursts, in acrylic not oil, and sometimes without repeated dipping into a paint pot. They seem based on simple exercises enclosing surface areas with rudimentary (but often discreetly incompleted) geometric shapes. Sometimes these forms overlap (such as diminishing circles tucked in a corner), sometimes they don’t (as with juxtaposed diminishing sized squares). Sometimes a regular grid composition focuses on maximum density: other times only two differently sized circles divide up the canvas - but into six.

As a group the marks made on these paintings look as if they are based on verbally articulated instructions in print, like those that form the basis of Sol Lewitt’s wall drawings. Not say a mathematical formula - though they could be that too. Not preplanned, but perhaps made instead using the robot as a paint application tool operated by Ingram live step by step, with no independent robotic ‘thinking’ or ‘mark awareness’ involved.

Though I prefer the earlier more ‘expressive’ images made by Ingram and his cybernetic system (because of the humour of a machine ‘expressing’ interiority), these more subtle ‘minimalist’ works do have an appeal. They are diagrammatic, possibly symbolic and maybe even realistic (as drawings copying art).

Their dragged but tidy lines of paint, with their internal streaks, ragged stop/start smudges, and wonky linear rhythms provide an odd foil that counters the expected impeccable finish of most schematic art like this. Such linear imperfections are just as important to the attentive viewer as the possible sequences of drawn shape elements or grid lines. Those sequences, the way the eye attempts to determine which marks came first and which were last, provide a restrained satisfaction as record: a precise trajectory of artist’s thought - and wobbly robotic ‘hand’.

John Hurrell

Print | Facebook | Twitter | Email

 

This Discussion has 2 comments.

Comment

Owen Pratt, 4:34 p.m. 25 July, 2013

If one has to outsource your art making this is the way to do it; neo marxist keeping control of the means of production.

But who chooses the colours?

Reply to this thread

John Hurrell, 5:14 p.m. 25 July, 2013

Well Simon always has insisted on the right to control such decisions, esp what ends up (out of a group of experiments, such as with radio energy) in the gallery.

Here is his statement for this show:

In Interview with a Painting Simon Ingram reverses some the machinic codes of his recent work for a more direct dialogue with each painting. Rather than look upwards and outwards to radio energy and space, the paintings in this exhibition are interested in a dialogue with the artist, the studio, colour and the culture of painting.

(Artist's statement, June 2013).

I would have thought all his paintings show an interest 'in a dialogue with the artist, the studio, colour and the culture of painting.' How could he ever be otherwise?

Reply to this thread

Recent Posts by John Hurrell

JH
Barbara Tuck: Delirium Crossing (installation view), Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, 2022-23. This exhibition has been developed as a partnership between Anna Miles Gallery, Ramp Gallery and Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery.

Barbara Tuck in Christchurch

CHRISTCHURCH ART GALLERY TE PUNA O WAIWHETU

Christchurch

 


Barbara Tuck
Delirium Crossing

Curated by Christina Barton, Anna Miles and 14 invited art historians, writers and curators



15 October 2022 - 26 March 2023

JH
Still from Laresa Kosloff, New Futures TM, 2021, 4K video, made from commercial stock footage, 4.37 mins

Detecting Sentience & Cognition

TE TUHI CENTRE FOR THE ARTS

Auckland

 

International group show
Who can think, what can think

 

18 February 2023 - 7 May 2023

JH
Installation of Koen Delaere's exhibition 'White Light White Heat' at Fox Jensen McCrory.

Spectacular Paradoxical Delaere

FOX JENSEN MCCRORY

Auckland

 

Koen Delaere
White Light White Heat


11 February 2023 - 18 March 2023

JH
Cat Fooks at Anna Miles: Sour Orange Summer, 2023; Brittle Star, 2023; Pocockiella, 2023;  Kobold, 2022. Photo: Sam Hartnett

Typically Exuberant Fooks

ANNA MILES GALLERY

Auckland

 

Cat Fooks
Terebella


18 February 2023 -16 March 2023