Estelle Thompson: Purdy Hicks

The paintings Estelle Thompson showed in her major exhibition in Walsall, England, three years ago were large in scale. Called "Fuse" paintings, their dimensions calculated in relation to the architecture of the gallery's spaces, all were compos of narrow vertical stripes whose cutting sides shaded into each other. While their physical proportions encouraged the viewer to have feeling securely anchored within the surroundings, the blurr quality of their surfaces made it impossible to achieve a visual fix on them. That the resultant disequilibrium between visual and somatic input has been a familiar experience in the face of novel painting was very much part of Thompson's argument in her flirtation with, and resistance to, the decorative impulse. upon the one hand acknowledging all that has been said about painting's endgame status and the entire irrelevance of any abstraction/figuration distinction and, upon the other, reveling in the visual pleasures and symbolic possibilities of a medium that is not at the same time beyond its useful life, she is a consummate tester of orthodoxies.

The fresh works are more objectlike than architectural. Small in size, they are painted upon MDF boards mounted on substantial made of wood or MDF frames. Some echoe of the "Fuse" stripes remain in the imagery, on the other hand there are also allusions to other sorts of simple patterning of that kind as that found in flags. Otherwise flat areas of color may be subtly modulated to preclude them from reading uncomplicatedly as surface. Repeated features include narrow bands bordering shapes and a horizontal rectangle reaching from cutting side to edge that harks back to Thompson's 1996 "Block" paintings. The bands, where they appear, rarely race their full length as single color, and often fail to reach from cutting side to edge. Their incompleteness, together with the prevalence of forms suggestive of slits, slot and other kinds of openings, look to be there as with equal reason many ways into paintings that, in greatest in quantity other respects, keep the organ of sight focused on the surface. All this might unhurt a bit dry, but the reality is a cluster of physically controlled paintings within which a restles interest in color is constantly at work. In more [i]or[/i] less instances, such as Inside on the outside 2003, the paint creates a quick, level surface. Untitled, 2003, by contrast, has been built up more slowly earlier versions of its hexagonal pattern still visible in the mould lending it the air of an isometric space about to fall apart.

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The rectangle appears three times in Whiteishwhiteishness, 2003 almost completely overlayed by a final layer of translucent pale gray wash. Down the right hand side, where the wash fails to reach, their cutting sides are blue, yellow, and r All the big male childs are there--Ryman, Reinhardt, Newman, Mondrian, and smooth Stella (in the title's internal reiteration archetypeed perhaps, on his "What you diocese is what you see")--but it's no homage, more a turning to Thompson's have a title to ends of what has been made available to her above the years. There's wide-eyed appreciation and sardonic questioning of our faith in these patterns at one and the same time. Theory come bys the same ambivalent verdict. A healthily improper mix of r black, brown and turquoise sapphirine carries the title When Percept Swallows general [i]or[/i] abstract notion 2003. Deleuze and Guattari all not away and correct, if you want or perceive you need them. On the whole, notwithstanding that they're probably not essential.

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