Field of Vision
Emily Moore, Matthieu van Riel, Stéphane Villafane, Sonja Weber
Lisa Norris Gallery, London
14 March - 27 April 2019
Perhaps when we think of the field of vision in terms of art we are really talking about the artist lens or filter. The lens through which we for a moment experience what the artist sees, memorises or imagines. Often the notion of a field is a frame cut from something larger. What fills the space or field of vision in these artists’ work is something we explore in this exhibition.
Emily Moore
Landscape has always been her primary source of inspiration. Her subject matter comes from images taken from having spent six winter seasons snowboarding in France and California. Her own photographs are the starting point for her paintings. She has been working on wooden panels since she graduated from the Edinburgh School of Art in 2013. Process is extremely important in her work, whilst interested in exploring different ways to portray the mountainous terrain, everything becomes abstracted so it becomes much more about the materials and the surface construction of multiple layers. What fills the space or field of vision in Emily Moore’s process is the juxtaposition of random or overlooked manmade structures and the organic curves of a mountainous landscape.
Matthieu van Riel
Experiences of the grandeur of nature and man's humility in respect to it is a core theme of Matthieu van Riel’s work. Without focusing on this type of experience, van Riel can’t make paintings. The sublime stems from the landscape tradition of the 19th Century, a term that was used to capture the epic nature of some landscape vistas in painting. He is an avid hiker and takes photos of the flat Dutch landscape or the monumentality of mountain ranges such as the Alps or the Norwegian Hardangervidda. He then returns to his studio to get distance and starts painting from memory, sometimes with just a line or curve. He translates the colours and light and feeling of these spaces into his painting practice. Working through a process of simplification and reduction, he arrives at a final image which hovers on the cusp of abstraction and figuration.
Stéphane Villafane
Stéphane Villafane records his experiences in generally deserted or transient spaces with a travel diary or notebook instead of a camera lens. His principal interest is space and its relationship to time. How one can formulate different types of space; empty space, constructed space, natural space, meditative space and so on. In order to explore and discover new space, he sees it vital to empty his paintings of a narrative or a subject. He describes his process more of observing things from a distance, which involves working across different media including photos, sketches, and models before he arrives at a painting on a large scale. He describes his field of vision as an ever changing, open field of perception.
Sonja Weber
Sonja Weber uses the camera lens to first capture her fleeting experiences of nature (Sonja is an avid sailor and rider with Degrees in textiles and painting). Her jacquard fabrics are intimate ephemeral moments caught by someone who knows the ocean or the forest with great familiarity. Painting is actually the conceptual turning point for her art, because while she weaves her images with a computer- based loom, the results are painterly in their effect. The surface structure, created by emphasizing or de-emphasizing the fine thread, is crucial, as are the many subtle gradients of tone. The image never stays the same but moves as the light or viewer in front of the image shifts. She says of her work, ‘It is possible for the viewer to take flight for a bit into my pictures of water and clouds, in order to calm down, relax, feel at ease.’
Field of Vision is an exhibition designed to open our eyes to contemporary approaches to the landscape. These works are not only about the locations where the works are conceived and produced but also the ideas or motivations behind producing the art work in the first place. Each artist encourages us to be active in looking at their work and piecing together patterns and perhaps finding our own meaning in each piece.
LISA NORRIS GALLERY
72 New Kings Road, London SW6 4LT
