Simon Stone
Current Review(s)
Thrown Together
Simon Stone at SMAC Art Gallery Cape TownLike his exhibition at the Irma Stern Museum in 2006, Simon Stone’s current show, 'Thrown Together', comprises a variety of his characteristic pin-board compositions, a handful of his still lifes and several of his thick 500-paged notebooks crammed with watercolour sketches that serve both as reference for his painting and as limbering-up exercises. On average, Stone produces about 120 of these a month, and their exhilarating freedom and spontaneity make them an accomplishment in their own right.
The still lifes, like Nine Boxes, are highly accomplished works in which conventionally beautiful subject matter cedes to stark arrays of prosaic, utilitarian objects usually deemed devoid of aesthetic significance. Delicacy of colour, form and line transmute the nine empty cardboard boxes into a Whistlerian exercise in sumptuous restraint. Apart from a little cardboard brown and black, this tonal symphony revolves around luscious creamy whites that assume myriad different chromatic disguises as they reflect the colours of objects adjacent to them, flushing with tints of pink, gray and violet so pale and nuanced as to be almost imperceptible.
The squares and rectangles of the open and closed boxes are integrated into a sculptural essay in minimal geometry, and the carefully orchestrated contrasts between the solids and voids, the shapes and sizes, reveal a flair for placement, interval and rhythm worthy of Morandi. The boxes dictate a cubic theme, and the frame, drape, wall and table’s metal base either repeat the basic motif, or ring changes upon it, so that the entire painting becomes a fugue-like sequence of themes and variations.
The pin-board compositions are motley compilations of media images plundered from different cultures, continents and eras. Travel, art and architecture are the mainstreams of the artist’s inspiration, and some of his most arresting passages are painterly reveries, which evoke his favourite remembered places with a dreamy lyricism and wistful yearning. Nothing could be more evocative and atmospheric than the vignette of Table Bay in Fermi’s Lecture, the cameos of Victoria Falls and Knysna lagoon in Blue Summer, and the gray, wintry London skyline in Goodbye to Candescence.
08 December 2011 - 31 January 2012
Listings(s)
'Thrown Together'
Simon Stone at SMAC Art Gallery Cape TownSimon Stone’s new series of paintings portrays a personal exploration of elusive memories, dreams and recollections - the silhouette of a receding landscape, framed cityscapes, lone figures or female forms, distinctly recurring motifs, lines, holes, slices and brief stops. Compositionally the paintings are split and fragmented, divided into a series of singular conversations and moments caught in their own time. Simple and complex, the paintings are other-worldly and magical, while remaining quietly every-day.
Stone explains his creative process: ‘I do not think about meaning, it comes out in the end, what is meaningful to me…I spot something and I take it further’.
As the exhibition title suggests, ideas are ‘thrown together’. Seemingly unrelated objects, people and places, each with their own identity and meaning for the artist are placed together on the canvas - intuitively structured and fluidly executed in ‘the way it had to happen’ so that‘it could not have been anything else’. There is a juxtaposing of separate ideas and visual commentaries, but these are tied together and threaded by the artist in his own internalised vocabulary and library of references. Unconsciously or not, Stone’s selection is very clear to him. His ‘visual message’ is meticulously assembled.
08 December 2011 - 31 January 2012
