Brice Marden, the American painter, commented that each time you stand in front of a painting, you have changed but the painting has not.
”John Nixon’s assemblage paintings often include everyday objects. Prior to lockdown, I saw these as formal shapes, but now standing in the small gallery upstairs at Two Rooms these become a poignant reminder of domestic, personal space,” says Evan.
”A spoon attached to a black canvas not only reflects the white of the adjacent white canvas, but makes me reflect on the centrality that gathered around eating during lockdown, of the ubiquitous spoon feeding the prisoner in isolation, of a prosaic object that
connects everyone.
I found the domestic implied in the paintings of Matt Arbuckle in the large gallery downstairs too. I may’ve looked at his works as landscapes, as I have in the past, but now the paint impressions suggest curtains diffusing light from an inaccessible outside world, chromatically cool in greens and greys.
Even though the view from inside looking out is one we perhaps most often see, four weeks of quarantine is enough to imprint it with extra layers of meaning. While Gary McMillan often depicts exterior scenes as seen through glass – the window of a room or windscreen of a car – his new work at Fox Jensen McCrory pushes the view onto the surface of the glass itself. The image separates into individual droplets of colour. We don’t see through the glass, rather the glass becomes a screen that the outside is
projected onto.
Although these first artworks I visited post-lockdown are seen through the lens of quarantine, they do not make the walls close in on me. Art makes one think, they allow us to travel. I’ve never been so pleased with my art collection than having it to gaze on over Level 4. Perhaps with our borders closed, it’s time to travel with our eyes and minds through the vehicle of art? In these times, we need art, and artists need us.” (Evan Woodruffe/Studio Art Supplies)