Hong Kong—Pearl Lam Galleries is pleased to present a dual-space group exhibition at both the Pedder Building and H Queen’s galleries in Hong Kong. Vis-à-vis asks viewers to consider the agency of gestural abstraction through the semiotics of sculpture. Bram Bogart, Ron Gorchov, Michael Staniak, Frank Stella, Su Xiaobai, and Zhu Jinshi create works that evade binaries of genre; they are decidedly not-painting, not-sculpture and not-architecture. Their artworks favour alloy and hybridity, often marshalling the sculptural qualities of paint to further the possibilities of painterly mark making.

The term “autographic mark” entered our aesthetic lexicon following the conclusion of the Second World War when Abstract Expressionism dominated the Western art historical canon. At that time, abstract painting was characterized by gestural applications of paint whose appearance of spontaneity and all-over composition formed an artist’s visual signature. Curator Kelly Baum recently described autographic marks as “gestures that indexed the artist’s distinct will, personality, and psychological state.” These autographic marks embodied a post-war exuberance, a new beginning for a global world order following the atrocities of the recent past. Over 70 years later, gestural abstraction has evolved in many directions. Some of these trajectories mine charged social realities, while other avenues serve as material reflections on a world ever more cynical, sceptical, dislocated, disenfranchised and yearning for authenticity, connectivity, and truth free from alternative facts. Vis-à-vis examines six currents of gestural mark making that question the function of gestural abstraction in our current cultural climate.

Pedder Building

Ron Gorchov’s (b. 1930) simultaneously concave and convex, shield-like canvases encourage viewers to contemplate their immanent contradictions: their structure, composition, and markings occur as both otherworldly and familiar. Gorchov’s work seamlessly glides through two and three-dimensions, profoundly articulating meditative calm and unsettling uncertainty: paint appears to run off the surface of the canvas while kidney-like forms seem to bleed down the picture plane. Shapes are drawn, then drawn again. Marks feel impermanent. Diaphanous layers of paint dispersions glide over the painting’s surface as if emblematizing time slipping away. Linen edges are left unpainted and raw. Staples are visible and unselfconscious. Gorchov is undoing our expectations of what painting could and should be. The artist’s sculptural “stacks” are equally replete complete with flaws and unevenness, letting gravity do the lion’s share of the work. In these works, individually shaped paintings are stacked vertically and held together by an architecturally rigorous wood and metal armature. Recalling Donald Judd’s eponymous sculptures, Gorchov’s stacks undermine the rigid tenets of Minimalism, favouring humanist impulses over finish fetish experiences. Titled after stars in the universe, Gorchov’s stacked works remind beholders of their own mortality.

RON GORCHOV, Albireo, 2018, Oil on linen, 195.6 x 91.5 x 23 cm

RON GORCHOV, Idomene, 2018, Oil on linen, 145 x 101.5 x 24 cm

Michael Staniak’s (b. 1982) paintings intentionally complicate the legibility between the digital and the handmade. Although all of the artist’s compositions are made entirely by hand, Staniak marshals synthetic colours to evoke digital platforms. Fluorescent, neon, and highly saturated pigments are airbrushed onto a sculpturally engaged ground to confuse expectations of flatness and create innovative trompe l’oeil effects. Staniak’s practice updates and casts doubt on the traditional and altruistic role of colour field painting in the present day. For example, Staniak’s Internet Blueprint series razes our ability to discern between actual ripples in the composition or merely a mirage of three-dimensionality. In this body of work, Staniak’s implementation of “Facebook blue” simultaneously recalls a blank screen awaiting content and serves as a portal to the sublime.

MICHAEL STANIAK, IMG_387 (Pattern Recognition), 2018, Casting compound and acrylic on board, steel frame, 161.2 x 121.2 cm

MICHAEL STANIAK, IMG_358 (Pattern Recognition), 2018, Casting compound and acrylic on board, steel frame, 161.2 x 121.2 cm

Zhu Jinshi (b. 1954) sculpts with paint. His signature visual vocabulary, informed by living in both Berlin and Beijing, takes many forms, often combining textual language with mounds of paint whose collision with the picture plane generate a terrain evocative of jagged landscape. In these works, viewers are afforded an omniscient vantage point as if “reading” the picture plane from above. Working in diverse palettes—sometimes monochromatic, sometimes carnivalesque—Zhu’s abstract paintings disarm the viewer through their intuitive yet calculated composition paired with irreverent tactility. Notorious for applying paint with shovels, his picture planes are organic ecosystems. Pigment and binder will inevitably separate, leaving oil residue to pool on an otherwise pristine white ground. Over time, crisp black calligraphic text becomes disambiguated. Zhu’s work, rebellious by nature, abandons notions of collectivity in favour of vanguard originality.

ZHU JINSHI, Non–Calligraphy, 2016, Oil on canvas, 180 x 160 cm

ZHU JINSHI,

来源： 艺术门