a tall monochromatic painting by Paul Barlow

fig. 10

a square monochromatic painting by Paul Barlow

fig. 889

fig. 22

A striped black and grey painting by Paul barlow

fig. 781

fig. 111

monochromatic tall painting by Paul Barlow

fig. 110

, a solo exhibition including new paintings by British artist Paul Barlow.

Paul Barlow’s paintings are built from an intensely obsessive process of accrual and removal. Beginning with an unprimed stretched canvas positioned flat on the floor, Barlow floods the canvas with highly diluted acrylic paint. Then, hung vertically upon the wall Barlow applies a higher concentrate of acrylic - allowing the pigment to bleed into the water soaked canvas. This process is repeated over and over, often interrupted by a complete rewashing of the canvas.

Binary rhythms of paint and water, of addition and washing away, laying horizontally and hanging vertically, are set up. Minute adjustments and the surface tension of liquids affect the image that appears and recedes from view - the process oscillating indefinitely until a work is accrued.  

The works installed in Workplace | Newcastle are placed with attention given to the space between the works. Three new larger works are tall and thin, and obliquely echo the proportions of a human - subtly registering their physicality as such to the viewer. These are punctured by two smaller square-format works. Together they become an intervention into the architecture of the gallery, the spatial tension evinced within and between each work becomes palpable – operating together as if an orchestral score articulated by silent objects. 

’ evokes the paradoxical and indeterminate nature of Barlow’s practice. Assertive in their presence as both image and objects, there is a sense that they have just materialised - as if out of thin air - and may yet disappear again at any moment. Firmly rooted in the sublime, Barlow’s use of paint seeping into water and his intentional warp and weft between positive application and negative removal relates his work, by association, to ink paintings of East Asian tradition and their philosophical and contemplative underpinnings. Barlow’s work is however more closely aligned to a contemporary understanding of the sublime - that of deep mathematics, of fractal curves, particle physics, and wave forms and noise, ebbing and flowing, rinsing and repeating infinitely.  

Open by appointment. Please email info@workplace.art to arrange a visit.

Installation images of Paul Barlow's exhibition 'Thin air' at Workplace | Newcastle

United Kingdom

Newcastle upon Tyne

Workplace Foundation

WORKPLACE

Workplace presents "Thin Air," a solo exhibition of new paintings by British artist Paul Barlow, offering an engaging insight into his latest work.

Thin air

Artworks

Related Artists

Paul Barlow

London

Newcastle