Richard Nott 'Cipher'

About

The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves. Willem de Kooning Introduction Cipher is the latest solo exhibition by Richard Nott. The title is an intriguing indicator, as it is clear when speaking with Nott about his recent work and his oeuvre in general that any emotive meaning or reasoning within these matter paintings is not denied but remains coded and elusive even to him. A mystery that keeps the wheels in motion. When Nott speaks of the work, he speaks of its form, its torturous and chaotic construction, the elusive quality that has to ‘happen', and do so without shortcut. His description of much of the process makes it clear that his role is as conduit, there is no clear method; the matter is affected by its own particular and peculiar circumstances — by pouring, burning, scraping and peeling. His control over it at times is limited. When Rene Magritte titled his painting ‘Ceci n'est pas une pipe' (‘This is not a pipe') he illustrated paintings potential to create illusion. Nott's paintings are not illusionary, the history of the surface is one that is real, and has to be built. These paintings are objects — tableaus of their own history. Nott originally trained in sculpture and he often talks about the work in sculptural terms. Given it's physicality it should come as no surprise. But these are paintings. When he talks of the vital aspect of the structure of the work, a difference between the practices occurs to me. In sculpture the structure for a piece of work literally enables it to stand. Without it the piece would fall. In painting such a device does not have the same tangible necessity - so why to Nott does it feel so imperative? It is through the deliberated structural mark that is often violently and obsessively incised in to the surface of the material that the artist makes his emphatic appearance. The control to even out the confusion perhaps. Man's ordered existence within the chaos of nature is felt. A scar is made. Mark Rothco once remarked ‘Art is an anecdote of the spirit, and the only means of making concrete the purpose of its varied quickness and stillness'. Nott is an artist at the centre of the confusion of making, it is art because of the artists need to intervene, to spontaneously but assertively make his presence felt, and to leave a mark. It is this structural intervention that these paintings, indeed, stand upon. Through these intricate, entropic panels one can contemplate the ephemeral, the elemental, the environmental, the physical and perhaps the spiritual but also behold man's fundamental need to be present and to seek to gain order. Our disconnection with that which lays beyond our control does not surpress our attempts to enforce our presence. Joseph Clarke. 2010.