Super Flatland

About

Japanese flatness was famously influential on post-impressionist western art, and the modern Japanese ‘Superflat’ movement repurposes that tradition as a means of critiquing the shallow emptiness of consumer culture, so it makes particular sense that this is an Anglo-Japanese collaboration, bringing together artists from Europe and Japan.  The title comes from the cult Victorian novel ‘Flatland’ by Edwin A. Abbott, which presents the possibilities of worlds in which there are one, two or four dimensions rather than three. 

Michael Craig-Martin and Paul Noble’s drawings play between two and three dimensions. Glenn Brown creates illusions of textured surfaces. The perspectival logic of Sinta Werner’s architectural photo-collages isn’t what it first seems, and the same is often true of Malcolm Crocker’s paintings of futuristic cityscapes. Sinta Tantra’s geometric abstractions create space without quite occupying it. Kate Groobey animates flatness through pointedly comical dances, inspired by a residency in Japan. Ori Gersht’s ‘Floating World’ digital combinations of reflected gardens reference the classic Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints – some of which will also be included. And Miho Sato, Yuichiro, Tamura and Yuuki Hourichi - appropriately in a gallery with Japanese connections - update the tradition ‘from within’.

Curated by Paul Carey-Kent and Yuki Miyake