Stacks Hung On the Walls

I’m very partial to Julian Dashper’s minimalist paintings, maybe his circular images more than the rectangular stretchers with stripes -although the four coloured, canvas work pictured here is particularly gorgeous. I really like his pristine drum skins which as ‘greatest hits’ are related to the coloured circular record shapes on paper (and vinyl records of himself) he also often includes in his shows.

However the works I find especially intriguing in his current Sue Crockford show are the stacked, stretched but unpainted canvases hanging on the walls. I mention the fact they are hung because I think he is alluding to Claude Rutault, the French conceptual painter who often has unpainted stretchers leaning against walls or piled up on the floor as a sort of sculpture. But with Rutault you never get an unpainted canvas on the wall like here. With him a hung canvas is always painted the same colour as the wall. Rutault is obsessed with the history of panel painting in Europe, and the shift from the patronage of the church to that of the individual collector.

Take a look at Rutault’s definition / methods Nos. 161-168. Scroll to the section on stacks of unpainted canvases positioned on the floor.

http://www.cneai.com/rutault/engl/navig/dm/151-178ter.html

Dashper differs from Rutault in that he is making sculpture for the wall, not paintings. He makes square ‘stacks’ of two differently aligned canvases – each work having eight starlike corners that refer to the circular structure shown in his other works. The four examples in this show are relief sculpture, made by placing an outer canvas over an inner one pressed against the wall.

A much bigger work of three rectangular canvases butted together flush on the wall is quite different again. It is a painting and looks like giant steps that might allude to the viewer’s mental participation. Their unpainted surfaces hint at potential ideas, the latent possibilities each canvas possesses for future use. Provocatively austere, they seem to reference artist/viewer imagination and reverie.

Pictures from events associated with this article: