Parergon 2

Abstract

Parergon 2 is part a series of works researching the recurring relevance of illusion and materiality in painting practice as part of a touring exhibition project entitled ‘A Sort of Night to the Mind, a Kind of Night for our Thoughts; Illusion and Materiality in Contemporary Painting’. This research utilises a specifically developed method of applying graphite powder to produce illusive images with a very particular reflective quality; a changeable surface responsive to the viewer’s position. The paintings draw upon parallel research into modes of address in pictorial works, which produce a reflexive experience of viewing, i.e. positioning the viewer in an ambiguous way, rendering the act of viewing the work as a self-conscious one (with reference to theoretical studies of artists such as Manet).
This work presents a complex frame of images with an empty centre (parergon meaning the aside, the incidental as opposed to the 'ergon' or main event. Ref: Derrida’s ‘The Truth in Painting’). The images are drawn from a variety of sources, appropriating from film, painting and the everyday to evoke different experiences of time. The use of black ground and graphite suspended in an oil medium, was developed in part in response to the original reference point for the exhibition, whose title is based on two alternative translations of Honore de Balzac's description of illusion from the 1832 short story 'The Purse'. In the story, the paintings described reveal their materiality and illusion in a particular way in response to the fading light and shifting perspective of the viewer.

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