'Kiss Me Deadly'
Gallery Baton, Seoul, March 11 - April 11, 2015

The title for this exhibition comes from a Film Noir from the fifties, based on a Mickey Spillaine novel. My new series brings film, literature and monochrome painting into uneasy  contact.  The initial visual experience is of an undifferentiated  field of colour. Gradually, images and words emerge from the chromatic envelope. The images derive from stills sourced from my favourite movies, and the words come from the indexes or contents pages of my collection of books. There is no obvious connection between the words and the images, nor between these and the colours, though it is natural to seek such connections. I have  chosen staged and artificial images, fragments of fictional narratives. These narratives in one way or another concern the subject of ‘love’. The film images, from  a variety of sources, show couples kissing. They are reduced to a simple contrast of tone outline, and  the eye organizes what is an initially random-seeming jumble of splotches into patterns, linking only a subset together in order that an image can emerge from its camouflage in the background. The texts evoke an intellectual world characterised by detached reflection,  and  the quest for meaning and value. They are painted in relief, so they cast shadows and respond to the sense of touch, and are tangible  and real. The colours of my works are sensual but subdued. Perhaps they care nothing for the images and texts they support.


 

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INDEX