JOHN GOLDING – ONLY HUMAN

Posted on 2021-11-15

Although Golding was a distinguished abstract painter, he is probably more famous as an art historian, critic and curator. His paramount success in the field of art history has tended to overshadow his achievements as an artist, but it was on the latter front that Golding based his career and for which he wished to be remembered. He enjoyed considerable success as a painter, exhibiting both nationally and internationally throughout a career that spanned over half a century. As an artist, he is perhaps best-known for his large canvasses of the 1970s and beyond, many of which are held in esteemed public collections. These works are carefully constructed works of lyrical abstraction, they exude colour and radiance, dynamism, and expression. Given these brightly hued celebrations of abstract painting, it is surprising to consider the anguished nudes and nuanced darkness that characterise Golding’s early work, a time heavily influenced by his background in Mexico. ‘Only Human’ presents a group of oil paintings and smaller works on paper that explores this extraordinary period of transition, with its undertones of sexuality and investigations into the ambivalence of the human body.

Opposite – Torso, c. 1963

Exhibition runs through to December 22nd, 2021

The Mayor Gallery
21 Cork Street
First Floor
W1S 3LZ London

www.mayorgallery.com

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MAGNUS PLESSEN – HOPE LOVE HELIUM

Posted on 2021-11-15

‘Hope Love Helium’, the title of Magnus Plessen’s most recent series of paintings, references both the human condition and the process of nuclear fusion that powers the sun. The images are imaginative responses to the ineffable dynamics of affection and connection, as well as the not entirely unrelated process by which stars have transformed hydrogen into helium and, eventually, all the elements in the universe.

As in Plessen’s earlier work, these images defy conventional notions of realism and abstraction, figure and ground. They show painted traces of the paper templates and the adhesive tape used to plan their compositions, along with outlines of the stretcher bars that suggest an uncanny ‘reversal’, as if, as the artist says, their brushstrokes mark a direct encounter with reality. Thematically, however, they are the creative responses to new, quantum theories of nature’s structures and energies.

Opposite – Untitled (Fig. 24), 2021

Exhibition runs through to January 8th, 2022

White Cube
25-26 Mason’s Yard
SW1Y 6BU
London

www.whitecube.com

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