A New Malady

About

Ideas of dislocation, isolation and indecision permeate David Mackintosh's drawings. Images of uniformed youths with black voids for faces mix with dense renderings of dark woods, or delicate outlines of statues and birds of prey overlaid with veils of unexplained rings. Mackintosh's practice has been centred on drawing as a primary medium for over a decade, but in recent years has undergone a period of both formal and psychological expansion. Rendered in a limited palette of black, red, green and yellow gouache, the tone of these works is complex and elusive. Suggestions of our flawed attempts at connection mix with the insistence of our baser motives. In exhibition and publications the sequencing and juxtaposition of drawings create temporary relationships that spark streams of association and narrative. The increasing complexity of the drawings psychological landscape has been matched with a formal expansion of the possibility of drawing beyond the limitations of the page. For his first exhibition at WORKS|PROJECTS Mackintosh continues to explore the development of his practice into three-dimensional space. Two new sculptural 'drawing frames', oak structures that are articulated to position drawings in sculptural combination within three dimensions, move drawings in black and red gouache of mountain-like forms and abstract shapes through the gallery space. The new malady or sickness of the title remains elusive, suggested but not openly declared. Displayed alongside Mackintosh's single drawings, the juxtaposition of the different modes of presentation establishes a distinct tension between image, space and narrative that allow Mackintosh's works to remain intriguingly fluid.