John Nixon
EPW: Select­ed Paintings

FAK­TU­RA (EXPER­I­MEN­TAL PAINT­ING WORKSHOP)

Form + line, colour + design, tex­ture + mate­ri­al­i­ty, flat­ness + relief, min­i­mal­ism + max­i­mal­ism sit along­side each oth­er in this exhi­bi­tion to form a visu­al fak­tu­ra. Drawn from the last few years, these con­struct­ed paint­ings rep­re­sent one stream with­in my over­all prac­tice. Dis­played delib­er­ate­ly out of order, they make one or two hor­i­zon­tal lines along the gallery walls.

Though inter­mixed, these works are from three main groups: Ver­ti­cal Kon­struc­tions, in which sheets of raw Masonite or ply­wood pro­vide grounds for com­po­si­tions of woods, met­als and oth­er mate­ri­als; Four Squares, which fea­tures white ceram­ic tiles of dif­fer­ent sizes glued to paint­ed sup­ports and Gold and Sil­ver Kon­struc­tions, in which ready­made objects found on a vis­it to New York are attached to sur­faces paint­ed with metal­lic colour. Inter­spersed amongst these group­ings, are sev­er­al pairs of abstract paint­ings select­ed from my wider reper­toire, which indi­cate oth­er vari­ants rang­ing across lyri­cism and simplicity.

My dai­ly process is one of con­tin­u­ous artis­tic activ­i­ty in sev­er­al medi­ums, includ­ing paint­ing, draw­ing, col­lage and pho­tog­ra­phy. This allows for cross-pol­li­na­tion between the artis­tic dis­ci­plines so that diverse and oppo­site chan­nels of enquiry open up for me. While mak­ing ​‘rule-based’ works that pay atten­tion to the spe­cif­ic nature of each dis­ci­pline, my method is also open and serendip­i­tous. My engage­ment is with mod­ern art, and pos­si­bil­i­ties for its extension.

See­ing is para­mount to my work, espe­cial­ly when such a large com­ple­ment of diverse paint­ings can be viewed in one place and time. With­in the lab­o­ra­to­ry of the EPW, visu­al art is pro­posed as an expan­sive field of enquiry that is valid in itself.

John Nixon, 2018