Private View - Interject - Tim Ralston

About

Tim Ralston is continually experimenting with the inter-disciplinary nature of contemporary art. His ephemeral, architecturally scaled, site-responsive paintings intervene and slice through the spaces they temporarily inhabit.

Ralston’s artworks are concerned with our connection to the landscape, and the specious nature of landscape as seen throughout art history. Within the confined parameters of this genre Ralston makes work that examines what landscape painting can be, turning the traditional understanding of landscape on its head. There is no ostensible depiction of nature in them but rather they are an abstraction of the landscape; a visual realisation of his energetic relationship and response to an environment - informed by the politics of green space in the urban environment and how nature is reintroduced into an existing architectural framework.

These immersive paintings are de-constructed to their constituent parts, with the focus being on the support frame and surface. Experienced in the construction of painting panels he lets the rules inherent in this aspect of the practice inform the aesthetics. Ralston applies thin layers of oils and gesso onto the paintings’ plywood surface, his subconscious gestures attempting to retain the rawness of the construction. He goes onto painstakingly sand back the painted layers revealing a smooth reflective surface where luminous colours appear.

Known for showing in non-art spaces (including abandoned multi-storey car parks) what is fundamental to all of his paintings is the dialogue with the place they inhabit. Using plans and photographs, he builds up a comprehensive understanding of the architectural characteristics of where the paintings will be shown. Back in the studio he draws potential structures and constructs maquettes or speculative proposals. These large works do not fix directly to the wall, floor or ceiling, instead they use the elastic potential within the materials themselves to provide the force to temporarily wedge and consequently clamp the work into place.

Ralston wants his work to be viewed in the round. For his exhibition at The Foundry Gallery the piece First Iteration of a Gesso Panel (dismantled) a floor to ceiling constructed intervention presents itself as a curtain of blue grey carving the gallery in two. A section has been removed and the void which mirrors the rear sash window acts as a framing device for two smaller wall based works. Its counterpart First Iteration of a Gesso Panel (hinged) rises up from the balustrade to the ceiling, its blue grey colour comparable to a London sky frames the exhibition behind it, while two more wall based works punctuate the white walls with their reflective surfaces.

With these new paintings Tim Ralston is challenging our very understanding of landscape both as an actuality and an abstract concept. His three-dimensional ephemeral paintings “exist somewhere between painting and sculpture” (1) their temporality a quiet nod to the transient nature of landscape.

(1) Artsy Editors (2015). On the Importance of Donald Judd [Article]. http://www.artsy.com/URL