Alan Charlton (b. 1948, UK)
Line Painting, 1979

Konrad Fischer, Düsseldorf, Germany / Visited on 22/01/2020

Charlton plays with shapes of his canvases making them almost sculptural, or at least blurring the line separating the two. Moreover, it nearly eradicates any border between the motif and the painting as such – it represents a line, it presents a line, it is a line. A small, but very effective gesture that feeds my curiosity about the boundaries of normalised categories.

And while very conceptual, it is also interesting for its formal qualities. It makes a distinct statement in the room, structuring it in a new way.

I have not come anywhere close that refinement and minimalist precision that Charlton exhibits, but I want my works to work in a similar manner when it comes to representation – they present themselves in whatever they are, they are not intended as coded messages even if they could be read as such, so it is up to the audience to chose which level or levels of meaning to engage with. Yet where Charlton is pushing them to overlap as much as possible, I do not, I rather pile up quite incongruent stack of possibilities. But at the end it does not matter, it boils down to how any particular member of the audience is conditioned to engage with the work…