John Hurrell – 5 September, 2019

In a sequence of alternating rooms at Ivan Anthony, Patrick Lundberg and Richard Bryant mingle their two exhibitions, two practices (one ‘culture’ / the other ‘nature’) dancing around each other, providing foils in thinking and painting methodologies.

Both are subtle in their use of materials (namely very thin paint), and impossible to accurately photograph, both force the viewer (and reviewer) to rely on memory of optical experiences, and both make you think about the works’ interaction with gallery architecture, especially walls on which they are placed.

Lundberg‘s skinny bootlace paintings are vertical geometric abstractions, compositions that are mathematically and precisely organised. Measurement rules—with articulated, carefully positioned oblong shapes in a deep ‘miners’ lift-shaft.’ Straight edges dominate (they are not clinically impeccable: the fabric sides swell and subtly undulate) and often a stippled texture is apparent. The colours, in thin paint, are saturated and hot.

These eleven works are more like slots than slits or slivers. Their consistent narrow breadth is just enough for Lundberg to creatively exploit for compositional impact via repeated calibrations and chromatically penetrating depths. Stand back too far and the whiteness of the walls creates a haze that creeps round the long sides and obliterates. However, if you stand very close you can see undercoats of colour peeking through, as well as connections in the oblongs with Lundberg‘s drawing pin ‘ball’ works with their delicate (extremely fine) crisscrossing lines.

Aspects of these paintings remind me of Milan Mkrusich’s glazed surfaces and geometry, Barnett Newman’s ‘zips,’ the stacked wall modules of Donald Judd, the leaning poles of André Cadere, and Fred Sandback’s string sculptures. It would be a mistake to think of them as ‘minimal’ because these works are not holistic but decidedly compositional—like (for example) most music with its considered placement of notes or chords. For Lundberg the ‘micro’ or diminutive is an exciting world he offers the viewer—one they may visually ‘step into’ and explore. Work that is inventive and courageous. Wonderful.

John Hurrell

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