| Andrew Graves makes paintings that sit at the edge of what is recognisable, yet at the moment when revelation seems imminent they shift and blur. They contain a promise that at some point, soon, their nature will become clear, their meaning unfolded. What dictates their forms? Perhaps the imagery is somehow pre-selected by the materials of each paintings construction. Chalk gesso boards produce a surface that seem to both absorb and reflect light, and when its flat surface is stained and rubbed with colour it seems to produce a paradoxical plane which offers both flatness and depth. Yet they are not exercises in virtuosity, each work uses only the minimal technique to bring them towards an idea, each form employed receives only the most rudimentary definition. His work seems to be produced with an urgency that allows no time for pause, the simple elements on the surface are produced and then left to pursue their own hermetic interrelationships, the painter denied any more part save as a passionate spectator. At what point does something become a painting, what decisions make someone a painter? Rather than becoming en-mired in the supposed limitations that end-game theories attach to the practice Andrew Graves seems to celebrate the possibility of promise that constructions of painting contain. |