New Solo show by Cass painting lecturer
"Painting is at an interesting crossroads in relation to digital culture and the media - I try to reflect this through the painting's chaotic visual spaces."
Michael Stubbs' paintings, which operate at the interface of abstraction and pop, are constructed by combining poured, abstract configurations of transparent varnishes and opaque household paints with ready-made graphic stencils. The repeated pouring, in conjunction with pop signs, form a physical process of sensual flat-on-flat layering that reveals multiple perspectives and optical depths.
This layering is part of the fracturing process, the breaking up or 'exploding' of a recognisable image, a response, says Stubbs, to the ever expanding proliferation of broadcast and internet-based images that fill our world. Amorphous shapes, sharp-edged logos, scything blocks of colour and silky veils of tinted varnish intrude into Stubbs' picture planes, fragmenting the surface; it is as though the physicality of the works are coming up against the pixilation of the flattened, immaterial space of the digital image.
Yet there is an overriding seductiveness in these works; the perfection of the finish and the boldness of the palette alleviate the chaos of the visual explosion. This is picture making being interrogated in a serious, sensual and often irreverent way. Stubbs critically re-configures the medium in an age of internet information overload.
"… Michael Stubbs's canvases, which suspend interlocking fragments of sharp-edged logos and scything blocks of colour in silky veils of tinted varnish, critically configure the medium for an age of teeming distraction and antiseptic corporate culture, but still come out looking ravishing and above the fray - no easy task. The jabbering, edgeless context of the Internet inevitably hovers over such work, as it does contemporary cultural production as a whole." Martin Herbert, Now See This; Michael Stubbs at Laurent Delaye, Art Review exhibition preview, issue 53, October 2011
Michael Stubbs's solo exhibitions include: Hollenbach Gallery, Stuttgart - 2015. The Avenue, Mayfair, London - 2014. Cass Gallery, London Metropolitan University - 2013. Laurent Delaye Gallery, London - 2011/10/09. Rod Barton Gallery, London - 2009. Baro Cruz Gallery, Sao Paulo - 2007.
MICHAEL STUBBS
Solo Exhibition
Fireeye Shift
From Counsel
Ground Floor,
14-18 Emerald Street
London
WC1N 3QA
Dates: 19 September- 25 October
Private View : Thursday 17 September, 6-9pm
Website: michaelstubbs.org