Bands
Location T293, Rome
DateMarch 23 - April 27, 2019
"I was looking to take away the barrier of paint, to meld color and material together without any physical separation, no matter how minuscule: to achieve true flatness. That’s the ethos for the entire body of work."
American artist Ethan Cook returns to T293 gallery with a new project entitled ‘Bands’ that presents a series of recent works marking the evolution of his artistic production over the past years. Cotton woven works, consisting of horizontal and recurrent vast stripes of colors combined by sewing, will be disseminated on the walls of the gallery, in a divergent palette of vibrant reds and oranges, pink and green, up to the deepest blue, brown and to the darkest black.
Painting flatness has been an important element of the spectator’s experience of the work of art since the advent of the Modern art, where the observer is supposed to appreciate the act of painting itself.
At the core of Ethan Cook’s research there is the interest in permeation of meaning into the material by the act of making it. This making process appear to be a performative way to combine a gestural movement with the movement of a machine, letting error and imperfections to be a natural result of the whole procedure.
So close to abstract paintings, Cook's practice goes yet so far beyond it.
The flatness of the canvas becomes a surface in which to create an apparent infinite space, by following a structural simplicity and proportion, and looking for a spatial depth. His compositions create a dialogue between colors and forms that are made by the artist himself with the traditional act of weaving canvases on a loom. The ‘bands’ compositions reflect a balanced relationship of elements, which are able to instill the impression of an almost tactile artwork.
American artist Ethan Cook returns to T293 gallery with a new project entitled ‘Bands’ that presents a series of recent works marking the evolution of his artistic production over the past years. Cotton woven works, consisting of horizontal and recurrent vast stripes of colors combined by sewing, will be disseminated on the walls of the gallery, in a divergent palette of vibrant reds and oranges, pink and green, up to the deepest blue, brown and to the darkest black.
Painting flatness has been an important element of the spectator’s experience of the work of art since the advent of the Modern art, where the observer is supposed to appreciate the act of painting itself.
At the core of Ethan Cook’s research there is the interest in permeation of meaning into the material by the act of making it. This making process appear to be a performative way to combine a gestural movement with the movement of a machine, letting error and imperfections to be a natural result of the whole procedure.
So close to abstract paintings, Cook's practice goes yet so far beyond it.
The flatness of the canvas becomes a surface in which to create an apparent infinite space, by following a structural simplicity and proportion, and looking for a spatial depth. His compositions create a dialogue between colors and forms that are made by the artist himself with the traditional act of weaving canvases on a loom. The ‘bands’ compositions reflect a balanced relationship of elements, which are able to instill the impression of an almost tactile artwork.
A review by Saverio Verini
“Preparing the canvas” is an expression that (almost) every painter is familiar with. It is a procedure by means of which the artist becomes familiar with the surface on which he will work: a physical relationship that lays the foundations for an ongoing dialogue between the work and its creator. In Ethan Cook’s practice this process should be understood in the most literal sense, as he creates his own canvases by weaving them on a loom: a demiurgic action that incorporates the tradition of painting with a sculptural attitude and a conceptual approach. In the series of works presented by Cook at T293 everything is on the surface. All the canvases – except for one, which has vertical stripes – are juxtaposed and sewn together to form horizontal fields of colour that recall the tradition of “flatness” and that reveal Cook’s admiration for artists such as Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko and Sean Scully. However, unlike them, Cook's work is not a form of painting so much as a simulation of it. His canvases seem to ask the viewer to execute a movement (perhaps a performative gesture?). Seen from distance they appear to be painted with precise brushstrokes, albeit with the imperfections that are typical of the human hand, in a combination of tension and relaxation. It is only when we examine them close up that we notice the material quality of these chromatic abstractions, which deceive the viewer's eye just as certain ancient paintings did. Seams and crooked lines represent a kind of “dripping” for Cook, while the frames that enclose these works remind us that here, after all, we are still dealing with the tradition of painting and its possible extensions.
“Preparing the canvas” is an expression that (almost) every painter is familiar with. It is a procedure by means of which the artist becomes familiar with the surface on which he will work: a physical relationship that lays the foundations for an ongoing dialogue between the work and its creator. In Ethan Cook’s practice this process should be understood in the most literal sense, as he creates his own canvases by weaving them on a loom: a demiurgic action that incorporates the tradition of painting with a sculptural attitude and a conceptual approach. In the series of works presented by Cook at T293 everything is on the surface. All the canvases – except for one, which has vertical stripes – are juxtaposed and sewn together to form horizontal fields of colour that recall the tradition of “flatness” and that reveal Cook’s admiration for artists such as Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko and Sean Scully. However, unlike them, Cook's work is not a form of painting so much as a simulation of it. His canvases seem to ask the viewer to execute a movement (perhaps a performative gesture?). Seen from distance they appear to be painted with precise brushstrokes, albeit with the imperfections that are typical of the human hand, in a combination of tension and relaxation. It is only when we examine them close up that we notice the material quality of these chromatic abstractions, which deceive the viewer's eye just as certain ancient paintings did. Seams and crooked lines represent a kind of “dripping” for Cook, while the frames that enclose these works remind us that here, after all, we are still dealing with the tradition of painting and its possible extensions.