Luke Frost | |
Paintings
In Five Dimensions: Luke Frost | ||||
However with Williams we are tracking back like a movie camera from a scene, with Frost we are zooming in. The environmental or phenomenological nature of his work is most apparent (programmatic even) in the corner painting, 'Volts no.21': for as we approach the red volt at the centre, checking its symmetry, looking for variation, the blues to either side seem to swing out in our periphery vision, enveloping us. It becomes a room, a little universe in its own right. (As Elaine Scarry has pointed out, the room is a refuge, its walls in effect an extension of our body: the way, for example, in the two triptychs the volt bends round the canvas to touch the wall itself makes us aware that the wall itself is integral to these works, a membrane or skin between us and the outside world.) These phenomenological experiences are much like those have we have in looking at certain minimal sculptures, especially those of Dan Flavin - an artist Frost much admires and who is an acknowledged influence. In Flavin the object, a neon tube or group of neon tubes, are simple discrete things, but they induce complex environmental experiences. The light or the experience of light spreads across the whole room; in his later more complex installations faint shadows in complementary colours to the lights are thrown off the viewers, so that they, the viewers, quite literally become part of the work too. This does not, obviously happen, in Frost's work, instead we have this pulling into the detail.
| The two 'Supervolts' triptychs are about an unexpected harmony - is it just I who read them bottom to top? The top panel is like the final movement of a symphony returning to the original key of the first, but changed. This also makes explicit what is implicit in the single panel paintings that there is a progression in colour - a movement. We cannot but join up in our mental perception the three nearly central vertical lines: we have to make these three canvases into one big painting. In effect the area of wall between them becomes part of the painting. And that is probably true of all his works, that the visual experience extends out over the white wall around - Robert Ryman has said of his white or near white paintings that because so much of the drama or statement is in the edge and in how the edge is formed against the wall that his paintings effectively extend out about 18 inches onto the wall in all four directions. This seems true of Frost's work - explicitly so in the case of the seven foot painting where the incident is on the outside edge facing the wall. Indeed if we should allow ourselves time for our eyes to sensitise themselves sufficiently we will be able to see the colour reflected from the painting's edge out across the nearby wall. So let us approach another painting again, this one the large grey square painting with volts vertical in reds at the edge, 'Volts no.18.3'. Again this dance: the bright volts pull us to each side - sidestepping: we go in close to get the colours right in our head, we note the way the colour reflects on the wall. We step back again and then move in once more until the grey immerses us and becomes our universe. When asked what distance was the correct one to view his paintings Barnett
Newman's answer was "Eighteen inches". He was only partially true, of
course: we do need to experience this grey - under which we can maybe sense some
other colour, a red perhaps? But also, importantly, as we step back once more
we become more aware of how the painting is affected by the light of the room.
The grey will rarely be even right across the canvas: the light coming from left
or right or above will modulate it. The painting is a thing in itself but is also
highly sensitive to its environs: it wakes and lives with the light. | |||
|
| Home | Selected Works | Tate St Ives 2009 | Studio | Prints | Biog/CV | Exhibitions | Essays | Contacts |
Design © NetPZ 2008 & Luke Frost