‘PATERSON HAS CHOSEN NOT TO SHOW HIS OWN WORK, AND
YET IT IS EVER-PRESENT'
Free association
TOBY PATERSON curates a show of his contemporaries at the Glasgow Print Studio. Jack Mottram looks at the work shown.
risms & Slim/nuns. an exhibition curated by
Toby Paterson. fairly Ill/cs with connections:
between individual works. between the IE exhibiting artists and even between Paterson's own work and the pieces on show.
But perhaps ‘curated’ isn't quite the right word. ‘I don’t feel like the curator of this show.‘ Paterson admits. ‘I drew tip a list ol‘ artists I was interested in and they gave tne what they wanted to give me. There was only one piece ol’ work that I specifically asked for. and I didn‘t end tip getting it. It was a modest project. you could say.‘
This tree approach has. nonetheless. given rise to an exhibition that feels strongly themed. with the current preoccupations of the (ilasgow scene to the lore (though there are artists from outwith the city here. too) and a shared enthusiasm among the selected artists for making work that is. loosely speaking. caught between two points. linal yet incomplete.
‘There are quite a lot ol‘ references to processes.‘ Paterson agrees.‘Whether that's people using maquettes. or systems to build images and forms with the implication there that something could be pushed a lot further. but with a question there about whether it is necessary to push them l‘urther.‘
This tendency is clear in Toby ’/.eigler’s
‘quuivalents l'or Megaliths‘. a mysterious assembly of
papery polygons. broken crockery and a three-legged horse. all gathered atop a light-box. as it Zeigler is about to return to form his hints and suggestions into a concrete idea. It is there too in Tony Swain‘s work on newsprint. a medium that is of the moment. inherently disposable. but here cautioust immortalised by over-painting. Monica Sosnowska‘s ‘Maquette for River“ has literally been caught on its way to completion — it has since been rendered as a
full-scale installation — yet in this context. it is among the more polished pieces.
Seen apart. work by Sosnowska. Swain or '/.eigler
might not appear to have a great deal in common with work by (‘hris Iivans. but his ‘(‘optalk‘ — represented by a poster advertising the police recruitment drive he instigated at Amsterdam‘s Rietveld Art Academy — is a snug lit in its application ol‘ an open-ended process to social. as opposed to l‘ormal or art—historical. concerns.
Another red thread is an inclination towards the investigation of spatial relationships. ‘I was interested in artists using these approaches to mess around with scale. or mess around with two and three dimensions.‘ Paterson says. ‘There's Alex I’rost‘s drawing of a sculpture. where he's evoked this complex system to represent an object in three dimensions two dimensionally. It's not a complex switch to make. but it‘s a fruitful one.’
Here. Paterson might almost be talking about his
own work: the more abstract translations in paint of
architectural forms in particular. or the sculptural installation he fashioned to display paintings at his last showing at the Modern Institute. And this is where Prisms & Slim/mm takes a peculiar turn: Paterson has chosen not to show his own work. and yet it is ever-present. as it‘. deliberately or unconsciously. be tackled his curation of this show as he might a new painting.
With such a wealth ol‘ work on show. all closely inter-related. but all standing on merit. this last near- uncanny aspect is the icing on the sweetest ol‘ cakes. Lhnnissable stul‘l'.
Glasgow Print Studio, Glasgow, until Sat 19 Nov. .0000
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