Monochrome

About

The avant-garde history of this Modernist idiom – from Malevich to Klein and Mary Martin – can be traced through the evidence here of their very different practices. As a group, they represent a riot of material approaches in a range of colours, textures, dimensions and tonal spectra: from the slick surface of ceramics to bold sculptural puzzles, dynamic object-relief and the subtle granular weft of the canvas. 

Olivia Bax’s curiously humanoid objects of found and made parts have been sealed into a state of construction with a pulpy hi-colour skin that serves to both flatten and articulate their armature bodies depending on the light source. 

While all things made embody a sense of their hours in manufacture, Tom Chamberlain’s delicately layered canvases of precisely applied marks over time create the sense of minimalist motifs held in a perpetual state of emergence.

Clare Goodwin’s fascination with the geometric and hard-edged sensibilities of painting has travelled across myriad surfaces: from the canvas to the wall and, here, clay. The muted colour and ‘whisper’ design of her ceramic compositions situate the viewer between high-art principles and socially resonant human narratives.

Hannah Hughes works in multiple media to create objects that hover between dimensions. The simplicity of her palette allows for the constant movement of the mind’s eye between the idea of these constructions as compressed sculptures or sculptural photographs.

Using paper and vibrant pigments Mirjam Blanka Inauen creates skin-like colour fields that reveal corporeal details. Suspended together they operate as both images and objects, connecting multiple ways of making and perceptions of intimacy.

Martina von Meyenberg collects preowned things and reconfigures them into her own sculptural language. Here she uses these treasures as stencils, pushing the tonal limits of the monochrome to reveal ghostly traces of the body on paper.

Florian Schmidt’s painted compositions in relief employ a wealth of materials to explore the interstices of painting and sculpture, iconic Modernist motifs and their richly referential journey between the walls of the gallery and design conventions of the buildings that house them.

Replacing shapes cut from the canvas with identical aluminium surrogates, Adam Thompson presents what appear to be simplistic inlay paintings. But the two different surfaces effectively spar in ways that enable the view to travel from hard to soft over a monochrome landscape.

Monochrome is curated by Clare Goodwin in collaboration with Coleman Project Space and StudioK3 Zurich