Preview: Thursday 9 January 2020, 5 - 7pm
Michael Stubbs’s paintings, which operate at the interface of abstraction and pop, are constructed by combining poured, abstract configurations of transparent varnishes and opaque household paints with ready-made graphic stencils. The repeated pouring, in conjunction with the pop signs, form a physical process of sensual flat-on-flat layering that reveals multiple perspectives and optical depths.
This layering is part of the fracturing process, the breaking up or ‘exploding’ of a recognisable image, a response, says Stubbs, to the ever expanding proliferation of broadcast and internet-based images that fill our world. Amorphous shapes, sharp-edged logos, scything blocks of colour and silky veils of tinted varnish intrude into Stubbs’ picture planes, fragmenting the surface; it is as though the physicality of the works are coming up against the pixilation of the flattened, immaterial space of the digital image. Stubbs interrogates and critically re-configures painting in an age of internet information overload.
Stubbs is a lecturer in Painting and Printmaking at The Glasgow School of Art.
Recent solo exhibitions include: Liverpool Hope University, UK, 2017; From Counsel (Laurent Delaye Art Projects), Bloomsbury, London, UK, 2015; Hollenbach Gallery, Stuttgart, Germany, 2015; Cass Gallery, London Metropolitan University, UK, 2013. Laurent Delaye Gallery, London, UK, 2011/2010/2009.
Recent group exhibitions include: ‘Dark Lantern’, Sabine Knust Gallery, Munich, Germany, 2109; ‘Superimposition’, Partners & Mucciaccia Gallery, London, UK, 2018; ‘Destroyed by Shadows, Cornerstone Gallery’, Liverpool Hope University, UK, 2018; ‘The Colour Suggestion: Between Abstraction and Figuration’, Oscar Cruz Gallery, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2017; ‘When Elephants Come Marching In: Sixties Echoes in Todays Art’, De Appel, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2014; ‘Hallogallo’, Cass Gallery, London Metropolitan University, UK, 2012. ‘Fast Forward: Contemporary British Art in Brazil’, Sao Paulo Biennale, Brazilian/British Cultural Centre, Brazil, 2010.
