Simon Allen 'White'

About

"I have overcome the lining of the colored sky, torn it down and into the bag thus formed, put colour, tying it up with a knot. Swim in the white free abyss, infinity is before you.”

Kazimir Malevich on his painting 'Suprematist Composition : White on White'

The beauty of white is in the purity of its shadows. These are not the velvety depths of chiaroscuro, but an illuminated shade concealing a fugitive light. Shadows on white are brittle and crisp, delicate and precise. They reveal rather than conceal.

A white form encourages association. This is a language of connections and archetypes, a mountainside is a ridge of sand, the vein of a dried leaf, the glint and gleam of shallow water. Immense weight and weightlessness, in the same breath.

These sculptures stem from my love of English landscape painting. I am looking for the white of Turners blinding vortex of light, or the pearlescent glow of Constables cloud studies.

I feel the strong sense of timelessness associated with white, it is both contemporary and ancient. White has a quality of absence and the capacity to envelop and define. White is simultaneously what is, and what is not.

White can hold a form and keep it balanced on the edge of infinity.

Simon Allen, 2016