Maggie Ayliffe, Oliver Binnian, Tina Dempsey, Lisa Denyer, Frances Disley, Brendan Fletcher, Gabriele Herzog, Erika Krause, Maja Rohwetter & Tobias Wenzel

INNER LANDSCAPES

11 - 18 AUGUST 2019

CURATED BY LISA DENYER, PRESENTED BY NIINA LEHTONEN BRAUN

“For me, nature is not landscape, but the dynamism of visual forces.” Briget Riley

Inner Landscapes brings together painters based in the Northwest of England and Berlin who employ a variety of approaches to contemporary abstract painting. Through explorations into the characteristics of paint and related materials, the artists in this exhibition are linked by their desire to pin down and capture sensation.
The exhibition considers intuitive decision making and the consequential actions of this type of painting as an activity. Within much of the work, residual landscape associations are apparent, as notions of the sublime and our fundamental emotive response to form and colour are investigated, tapping into contemporary ideas of desire and longing.
These responses are elicited through experimentation into shape, pattern, and texture as part of the orchestration of chance elements that contribute towards the painting process; a process that can be slow and considered, yet reflective of the sensory overload and the bombardment of daily life. It relates to the body, the physical world, the transient nature of city living, and the virtual.
A type of mediation between the between the physical world and the digital experience can be felt in many of the paintings where perceptions of visual depth, layering and the illusionistic qualities of the picture plane are juxtaposed with the physical attributes of texture, weight and gesture.
The exhibition incorporates influences from place, history and nature, creating a new interpretation of these ideas through an abstract language. This slippage in turn creates new interpretations of reality and new worlds to inhabit.
Drawing from fragmented imagery and rapidly shared simulacra of the every day, the haptic qualities of brush against support reference our shared experience of making sense of the world. Conversations, tensions and synergies are created, along with a sense of something immediate, tangible and authentic.

“Things outside you are projections of what's inside you, and what's inside you is a projection of what's outside. So when you step into the labyrinth outside you, at the same time you're stepping into the labyrinth inside.” Haruki Murakami