Untitled

2000
Parsons, Vicken
Engaging light with space, architecture and landscape, pictures of places – from memory or imagined – executed in low-key colours of sloping lines and slanting planes, ostensibly imply a feeling of calm, bareness and meaninglessness against something more uneasy, shallow, mysterious and tentative. Diminutive and jewel-like in size, the painting belies the scale of the space provoked. Curiously both concrete and illusionistic, befitting little sculptures, frieze-like across the wall. Rooms - minimal and hard-edged - of solid walls, with corners, doorways and windows connecting both the internal and external worlds, suggest a space beyond space. A deeply concentrated optical and spiritual force of space – from illustration to generalization – that, whilst not actually describing any detail, evokes it psychologically. A haunting, breathing space, defining, building and reminiscing about a sense of you actually being in ‘there’ too. Juxtaposing optical effects, the picture plane, built up of rectangles and squares, darken in colour and tone, as they signify different areas. Whilst not actually professing to be them - occasionally pillars don't hold the ceiling up - recognising that the perspective of geometric forms double as images that are repeated and transformed across the surface (like a light reflection on the floor) make for simple representation of pure abstract dynamics, pulling you in and out. Searching for a safe horizon or an escape from the metaphysics of a space empty of people, furnishings or items, your own presence in the centre of each room is implied. Estelle Lovatt
  • Artwork Details: 15 x 20cm
  • Edition:
  • Material description: oil on birch plywood panel
  • Credit line: © the artist
  • Theme:
  • Medium: Painting
  • Accession number: ACC5/2002

Share

Close
Artists
Artworks
Exhibitions
Articles
Other

The Arts Council Collection is the UK's most widely seen collection of modern and contemporary art.

With more than 8,000 works by over 2,000 artists, it can be seen in exhibitions and public displays across the country and beyond. This website offers unprecedented access to the Collection, and information about each work can be found on this site.