Back and forth — there is a lot of back and forth in making an exhibition happen. In a group show there are conversations from artist to artist, then from artists to venue and back again. In this instance there is the moving of work and artists from one country to another, and back again. But the ‘real‘ back and forth is in the making of paintings, in the studio, their evolution — the thinking. There is also the relationship of painting to its history and to its future. Travelling back to Malevich’s ‘Black Square’ is much quoted right now yet it might equally mean looking much further back (or sideways even) whilst thinking about how to move on.
Our initial selection of artists for ‘Back and Forth’ relied on what could be called painters’ instinct. Without articulating our criteria, we knew instinctively, as painter/curators that these painters shared a fascination with, and respect for, the formal field (the area defined by the support) of the painting. Regardless of what is painted on it, a painting support is usually a rectangle, square, circle or oval — it is geometric. It is the geometry of this field that each of these artists, no matter what the mode of their articulation, obsessively activate. This ‘thinking’ isn’t as universal amongst painters now as one might imagine and the various forms of dealing with it are pertinent here. Light and colour are also crucial to all of these painters — colour reflecting light or absorbing light — illuminated or mute. And variously all these paintersactively configure colour and materiality to evoke space or alternatively to reassert surface in their works.