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David Risley Gallery: Michael Simpson - Leper Squint Paintings - 22 Mar 2013 to 22 Apr 2013 Current Exhibition |
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Michael Simpson. Leper Squint painting 10
Oil on canvas 153x91cm. 5'x3' |
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Michael Simpson Leper Squint Paintings Opening Friday March 22. David Risley Gallery, Copenhagen David Risley Gallery is proud to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by Michael Simpson. The Leper Squint paintings continue a thematic thread — the infamy of religious history — that has consumed the artist for 30 years, from the Nights of the Hosannas shown at Arnolfini Gallery in 1983 through the 1989–2009 Bench Paintings series. The Leper Squint is an architectural feature of medieval churches in which an opening in the outer wall, often at an oblique angle, allowed lepers and other undesirables to observe the service while entirely avoiding contact with the congregation. The Leper Squint substantiates the absurd anomaly of Christian belief that leprosy was a punishment from God. These slits are a form of hypocrisy literally built into the foundations of the religion: those who need the church's charity the most are the ones kept outside. Simpson paints his subject square and frontally, providing a piece of furniture as an aid to reach the squint. The furniture, a step-stool or ladder, say, invites the viewer into the space of the painting. While Simpson’s Bench Paintings faced outwards, with the benches' backs towards the viewer, these new works are internalised: the squint looks into the space of the painting, a space we will never see. The viewer is held in an antechamber, denied view, waiting. The historical and architectural device of the squint has allowed Simpson to make a philosophical series of paintings about looking, about what exists and where we exist in relation to it. What is through the squint? The afterlife, death, the void, paradise, truth? The tone of the paintings is somber and atmospheric. They put us in a timeless space with no sense of location. Simpson provides us with a Beckettian space from which to consider questions of morality, art and mortality. "some of the strong associations Simpson has built up with the work of past masters, particularly, early Flemish painting. His execution of these works, with their asceticism and rigorousness is entirely contemporary, yet the regular reference to the universal and everlasting condition of life places them within a longer historical tradition". Tessa Jackson. Arnolfini 1996 "Simpson has steered a highly commited, focused and uncompromising course over a number of years, and in the process has arrived at 'painting' which is subtly stunning in it's density, sensitivity and austere formal poise". Roderick Harris 'Turps Banana' issue 3 "Perhaps it is his fixed subject matter that gives Simpson the freedom to explore the language of painting and, through that, the depths of art's ability to contain and communicate multi level narratives, obscure meaning and complex ideas" Mark Rappolt, Art Review March 2007 David Risley Gallery Bredgade 65 DK-1260 Copenhagen T: +45 32 20 38 10 [email protected] |
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