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Martin Nash Showcasing his latest
series of paintings
‘Selected Paintings 2002 to 2004’
Opening Times:
Tuesday - Friday: 11.30am - 5:00pm
Sat: 12:00pm - 4:00pm, Late Night Thursday until 7:30pm
All other times by appointment only, Tel. 0161 839 7187.
Martin Nash’s paintings describe a journey from one approach
to another within the discipline of abstraction. Nash has
chosen to include a wider chronological sample of his output,
partly as a means of demonstrating that procedures evolve
from another and partly to situate individual works in an
enlarged territory for future investigation. The exhibition
represents a vivid document of the ongoing development of
the artists’ practice.
Contemporary artists derive their working themes from a vast
range of experimental and referential sources but within the
painting, the focused manipulation of the concrete means of
the craft can yield an inevitably altogether less apparent
on more issue driven work. Nash’s investment in the materiality
of painting emerges as restlessness within these technical
means. The move from working on board to canvas has necessitated
a thorough revision of his methods, a shift that has in turn
extended the expressive range of his output. Colour harmony
and a kind of dynamic equilibrium are still the chief compositional
determinants but whereas in the earlier pieces the motifs
coalesced from multi layering the gestural brushwork tended
to carry narrative association. The latest work has a quietude
and simplicity that allows fewer colours greater play amongst
themselves.
The quality that characterises all of Nash’s work is
positivism. His training in textile design and architecture
contributes greatly to his ability to extend this essentially
optimistic aesthetic through image making that breathes a
sense of reasoned authority. All his recent work is permeated
by an achieved formal richness that is absolutely simultaneous
with the colour impression. The coherence and clarity of the
composition forms a stable point for departure for ones immersion
in the chromatic richness, a dance of colour that is rhythmic
and exquisitely measured. The colour, in turn, seduces and
then redirects our attention to the design. This circular
movement, uniting complementary hues within both narrow and
broader chromatic ranges with the rectilinear and curvaceous
interlocking structures that bind them, is the very stuff
of aesthetic pleasure.
Nash has succeeded in one of the most challenging areas of
artistic production. It is far more complex and demanding
business to produce overtly affirmative art with cast iron
integrity, than to produce ugly ill-formed and transgressive
work out of a sense of helpless fatalism. The wider repercussions
of the tone and temper of contemporary art are a vexed issue,
but where painting rewards contemplation it does so because
it engages the sensibilities of its audience. This is mature
painting to reward and sustain the many and is all the more
powerful for that.
For further information or images by the exhibitors contact
Comme Ca Art on: Tel: 0161 839 7187
Email: info@commecaart.com
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