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Walks in the Wood

ABOUT
Walks in the Wood - Gordon Payne

Walks In the Wood, N-dimensional

The title refers to an historical moment in art, and says something about the technical aspect of the work; the substrate is OSB board, with it’s ‘’ ready-made “’ spaces “in the wood’. ‘Walks’ is meant to invoke a famous phrase of Klee’s—‘going for a walk with a line’ (Pedagogical Sketchbook). What is proclaimed in Klee’s words is a basic tenet of modernism, the autonomy of the artwork. Autonomy means that the line has an aesthetic presence and expressive force in itself before acting as a means of describing or representing something.

‘N-dimensional’ is my term for a special kind of space. I would describe this space as a synthesis of three kinds of space to be found historically. The most recent is the literal space of the work, its actual extension, the three-dimensionality of the support itself. This was established as an aesthetic object in the l960’s under the name of Minimalism. Before that Modernist space was flat, or ‘equivalent’ space: the equal value of figure and ground. Cubism was its supreme expression. Preceding modernism for four hundred years was ‘classical’ or representational space. Based on the conventions of perspective, this pictorial or “illusionist” space has been the dominant form in western painting.

My synthesis would be a combination and balance of these kinds of space: literal space, flat space and deep space. The format is important. I keep to the space of the book. I am thinking of books in ancient art, illuminated manuscripts, the Book of Kells, Persian Miniatures, etc. However, my main reference is one particular painting from the l9th Century, “The Fairy Feller’s Masterstroke “ by Richard Dadd (l857). Ten years in the making this little painting has the amazing quality of being simultaneously ‘flat’ and spatial, and an unusual psychic effect results. I am working toward that effect but with an entirely different approach—what I would call a NEOMODERNIST sensibility.

Gordon Payne

Image Credit: Jeremy Payne Photography

TRIANON GALLERY

Shows

  • 2020
    • Studium
    • ---
  • 2019
    • Construct Counterpoint
    • askîy iskwew
    • This Apparent Magnitude
    • Salvage
    • Unruly Bodies II
    • Ghosts and Angels
    • ---
  • 2018
    • Art Becomes Nature
    • Occurrences
    • THE FIGURE in Relationship
    • Wer bist du?
    • That's not what I meant.
    • CORPUS PHILOSOPHORUM
    • I Reserve The Right
    • ---
  • 2017
    • From Away To
    • Return
    • Court Painter
    • IIKAAKIIMAAT
    • Underfoot: Domestic Abstraction
    • OLD BRICKS NEW TRICKS
    • ---
  • 2016
    • Collision of.....
    • Confined Landscapes: A Project From The Carceral Landscape
    • FOUR AND TWENTY BLACKBIRDS
    • COURT PAINTER & THE POLITICAL ELITE
    • Interface
    • /GRENZE
    • Faltamos Fantasmas
    • Evan Peacock
    • Ecoscapes: envisioning science and ecology
    • ---
  • 2015
    • The Field of Appearances
    • (un)Desirables
    • Time... Place... People...
    • LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS
    • Half Pace
    • I Wish I Was A Little More Delicate
    • Inappropriate Intensities
    • ---
  • 2014
    • senselikeblueplace
    • The Study of Where is Near
    • The Entangled Argument
    • Liar Liar
    • Hoarder Tendencies
    • DICKENS!
    • Recent Acquisitions
    • MUTATIONS
    • MICROCOSM
    • Hobby Shop
    • ---
  • 2013
    • Bloodless & Boneless
    • Unity in Opposition
    • Three Women
    • Pablo's Grid / Drop Cloth Paintings
    • Principles of Nostalgia
    • M.E.D.I.U.M
    • ---
  • 2012
    • End of Time
    • All You Can Eat
    • Manufacturer
    • The Wandering Thought II
    • The Voice Reached Us
    • Debra Tisdale
    • ---
  • 2011
    • Paradise Lost
    • Nature As Culture
    • Architectural Drawing
    • Decoy
    • Iconographies
    • ---
  • 2010
    • Nouveau Frankenstein
    • Potemkin – Whole Sum of Its Parts
    • The Irreal and The Imaginary
    • Elyse Longair
    • At the other side of beyond
    • Walks in the Wood
    • Muster
    • ---
  • 2009
    • Come Through my Doorway
    • Fortuna
    • Triangulation
    • Membrane
    • New Works
    • Serendipity
    • Early Work
    • Dear Edward
    • These are for Science
    • ---
  • 2008
    • Abitation
    • Drawing Distance
    • Paper Fitting
    • Potluck
    • A Haphazard History
    • Portraits from the Hive
    • Leftovers
    • ---
  • ARCHIVE
104 5th Street South, Lethbridge AB, Canada403-381-8888[email protected]
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