John Nixon
EPW: Sil­ver

This exhi­bi­tion rep­re­sents the most recent devel­op­ments in the EPW: Sil­ver project begun in 1995. Where­as the group of sil­ver paint­ings exhib­it­ed at Anna Schwartz Gallery in 2006 focused on tex­ture and mate­ri­al­i­ty, this group of paint­ings made over a four-year peri­od (2008−2011) pri­mar­i­ly explores prin­ci­ples of construction.

The paint­ings are ​‘built’ from var­i­ous parts, can­vas pan­els and planes of shaped chip­board. Whilst they have a three-dimen­sion­al aspect, they are still undoubt­ed­ly paint­ings. Though pre­dom­i­nant­ly mono­chrome, they also incor­po­rate black and white ele­ments. The rough indus­tri­al sur­face of the chip­board adds addi­tion­al tex­ture, whilst in some works sand has been mixed into the paint.

A new dynamism acti­vates these sil­ver mono­chromes aris­ing from an adher­ence to strong diag­o­nal lines and planes. Many works take the rec­tan­gu­lar can­vas hung from one cor­ner as their start­ing point. The forms: rec­tan­gles, squares, and tri­an­gles are com­bined in both for­mal and ran­dom ways. These basic prin­ci­ples gen­er­ate mul­ti­ple pos­si­bil­i­ties that are explored as vari­a­tion on a theme.

Con­sis­tent with my mul­ti-faceted prac­tice, the research into the devel­op­ment of the sil­ver mono­chrome runs par­al­lel to that of the EPW: Poly­chrome. Both groups of work are done con­cur­rent­ly as are oth­er sep­a­rate bod­ies of work using draw­ing, col­lage and pho­tog­ra­phy. In their explo­ration of tex­ture and dynamism, the Sil­ver Paint­ings also par­tic­u­lar­ly link with my exper­i­men­tal music project The Don­key’s Tail, an open free-music ensem­ble. Formed in ear­ly 2007, the group have to-date released 50 stu­dio and live CDs.