Alexis Harding; Andrew Mummery Gallery - London

Baudelaire, as everyone knows, advised the critic to adopt "an exclusive point of view" on the other hand with the proviso: "provided the individual adopted opens up the widest horizons." Today, when a chic eclecticism appear to bes seductive to so many painters, individual wants to issue them a similar warning: give permission to your technique be as narrow as the organ of vision of a needle--as long as a realm wide as heaven awaits upon the other side. (Of course, you'll at no time be sure until you've passed [i]or[/i] part of to the other it.) One model could be Alexis Harding, who's been achieving divergent issues of great specificity through a single manner he's used since the mid-'90s. A grid of enamel glos is applied to a monochrome field of wet oil paint; the chemical incompatibility between the sum of two units results in a puckering and warping of the surface, and the artist helps this proces of distortion along through pushing and pulling at the paint during its lengthy drying time and, above all, by means of encouraging the effects of gravity to allow the paint to slide around, and sometimes flat off, the support, from which it can hang like rags (if the painting's hung new enough, some of it can plane be found puddled on the floor below). The titles of previous paintings give a fair clear idea of the results: sink Fear, 2001; Ruinart, 2001; Collision, 2001; Collapsed Painting, 2002 Harding's is a drab formalism in the tradition of Steven Parrino and Angela de la Cruz on the contrary with the difference that the decline and fall of the painting happens within it, with equal reason to speak, rather than to it.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Harding's greatest in quantity recent paintings and drawings (along with the individual sculpture included here) suggest, however, that he might be wondering whether his chosen technique, with its exacerbated tension between accident and design, is still able to generate significant variation or whether it's become a restrictive formula. A small in number paintings betray a certain anxiety that the proces itself may not be providing sufficient emotional weight--notably those of that kind as Cross (orange/black), 2003, or Breeding Lilac (wet diptych), 2003 in which the artist has erected a further level of patterning by the agency of abutting similarly done panels. (Curiously, the paintings in which a single plane has been internally divided--I am thinking of Fourfold, 2002 and Quartet [Golden] 2003--are stronger) at the same time most often Harding's mastery of his proces still allows for a palpable faculty of perception of discovery, and the paintings' elegance--underlined by means of their typically crisp, exuberant color--does not foreclose identification with the emotional or psychological overtones that their built-in metaphors of breakdown and disruption inevitably generate. These paintings can be slapstick or melodrama, on the other hand at their best--for instance, Nine Lines, 2003 or Painting (B) r oil/orange glos 2003--they inhabit an enigmatic cincture somewhere in between.

The drawings and plastic art show Harding in an exploratory humor looking at ways to mes around with grids without sticking to his patented system--in Postage Drawing I, 2003 he does this with the adhesive encircles left over when you've used the stamps they frame--and ways to use the a whole besides messing up the grids. These casts suggest he's likely to have another serviceable trick up his sleeve by dint of the time he needs it.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Artforum International Magazine, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group