Patrick Heide Contemporary Art is delighted to present ‘Down to Zero’, an exhibition curated by Michael Roberts featuring a seemingly eclectic combination of artists whose main connecting strand, before beginning a new work, is a state of clean slate, a tabula rasa, a fresh start.
As curator Michael Roberts explains his conceptual approach: ‘Down to Zero’explores the premise that the artist starts from zero every time he/she begins a new piece of work. This group show examines the idea of completion through the work of 10 artists who at first glance have very different practices and working methods but share commonalities. Beginning a new process, an unknown, never the same, a journey of exploration, where it’s not always about arriving at the moment but about the continuous moment, it examines how artists work in diverse ways, with different origins that all lead to an object.(Full text in the attached newspaper print)
Prunella Clough integrated found objects into some of her early works, a green Parazone plastic bottle for example in the early 60s’ painting on view, to have a random starting point triggering the artistic process, while Andrea Gregson employs organic shapes of molten parts created during the casting process to develop her sculptures
An element of chance and irregularity that the human hand or technique brings to the constantly renewed creative process is evident in the pulled paint segments of Eric Butcher’s aluminum sculptures and Simon Granell’s moonlike painting surfaces. Even more radical are Piers Wardle’s experiments with material and found objects or David Connearn’s line drawings, which come close to meditation in their spiritual rigor, on display is a work executed with the artist’s blood.
Alex Hamilton manipulates and alienates our perception in his Photocopy Drawings through fragmentation and reconstruction. Hamilton’s vision of our environment is not unlike Dieter Roth’s, who leaves the deconstruction and decay to time and organic matter itself, cheese in the case of the multiple on display, “Oelper Scheperts”, a landscape near Braunschweig whose tree leafs are made from moulding cheese.
Perhaps most radical, most “Down to Zero”, are the early visual experimentations of Bridget Riley, condensed to the formally essential but developed to the visually most powerful, in the show exemplified by an iconic early 60s’ print experimenting with optical illusion.
‘Down to Zero’ has been conceptually developed by curator and artist Michael Roberts and is accompanied by a small publication with texts by the curator and Stephanie James, professor and founding director of Syracuse University, NY.