About
In March Lee Marshall will present new work for Salutations! at OUTPOST gallery, Norwich. Through works created for Salutations! Marshall will once again move beyond the canvas and explore the gallery space.
Marshall's earlier works also have a sculptural quality, creating a dialogue between the painted surface and the shape enclosing it. The rounded corners of his more recent paintings draw attention to the dimensions of the canvas and continue the exploration of the painting as an artefact. Rather than flat planes, the paintings become virtual realms created for the objects, and occasionally figures, to inhabit. Shapes float in non-hierarchical space, giving the viewer the sense that they are looking through a screen into a fantasy realm or a computer-game environment.
Marshall's work is both expressive and meticulously controlled. Juxtaposing crisp lines with painterly gestures, Marshall builds a realm in a state of flux, with competing techniques and vying marks and objects. Loose strokes vandalise the tight structures within each composition, giving the process a sense of spontaneity. Through playing diverse gestures against one another, and employing a certain amount of chance, Marshall ensures that each mark has earned its place within his visual world and process of painting. The exploration of colour is as extensive as his experimentation with marks. What on first glance appear to be almost garish works later reveal an in-depth analysis of tone in a subtle range of hues.
The paintings employ a vocabulary of popular culture, drawing on the techniques of street art and creating tag-like motifs, such as the cloud, rainbow and prism. These repetitious signs and symbols could be seen to represent the death of visual production in Marshall's science-fiction wasteland. Visual elements derived from graphic design, advertising, computer games and comics create his structures or environments. These apparently pop images, depicted in bold vibrant colours, are given a more sinister set of associations when spliced and resized. Marshall works with visual samples, building up layers of imagery, in a manner reminiscent of the sampling devices used in electronic music. The placement of marks draws the eye around the composition in a particular rhythmic sequence. Whilst Marshall has found points of reference in a spectrum of visual culture, from Surrealism to Tom and Jerry cartoons, his work is firmly rooted in the 21st Century.
Lee Marshall was born in Cambridge in 1986. He graduated in Fine Art from the Norwich School of Art and Design in 2008 and lives and works in Norwich. His recent group shows include: Kunstwerk Bazaar, Outpost Gallery, Norwich, December 2008; Pictures/Objects, Anglia Square, Norwich, October 2008; Degree Shows 2008, Norwich School of Art and Design, June 2008; At Home, Voewood House, High Kelling, Norfolk May 2008; Untitled group exhibition at Unit 5, Norwich, April 2008; Hans Brinker Painting Prize 2006, Hans Brinker Budget Hotel, Amsterdam, Holland, December 2006.
