After-image

About

An exhibition of work of artists whose starting point (however far they travel from it), is the photograph. With the invention of photography (and the popularisation of Japanese prints which arguably have a similar influence in disrupting the composition), painters in particular were liberated from old assumptions.

Recording, reproduction were no longer essential. The disrupted frame, the arrested or blurred image became starting points. Photography, like an alchemical Galileo transformed the way we see the world and began stealing its soul. It therefore changed entirely the way artists re-present that world if we can accept that is what they chiefly do.

Whereas the sketch and other (in)formal experiments such as Cozens' blot landscapes, existed to refine the painters' practice and sought to expand the painting form, it was ultimately photography that exploded the frame.