Exhibition of new paintings by British artist Michael Stubbs at Laurent Delaye

LONDON.- Laurent Delaye presents “Fireeye Meltdown” by Michael Stubbs. “Painting is at an interesting crossroads in relation to digital culture and the media – I try to reflect this through the painting’s chaotic visual spaces.” (Michael Stubbs).

Working at the interface of abstraction and pop, Michael Stubbs combines pouring techniques with hard-edged lines and stencils to force a collision of styles and create a challenging new visual language.

The paintings are made on the floor. Stubbs pours household eggshell, gloss paints and tinted floor varnishes over ready-made adhesive stencils, peels these off when dry and repeats the process again and again to develop both an optical and material layering effect. The flatness of the repeated surfaces is the focus, with a heady mix of opaque and transparent planes giving contrastingly delicate and bold passages.

The layering is part of the fracturing process, the breaking up, or ‘exploding’ of a recognizable image, a response, says Stubbs, to broadcast and internet images of violence and confusion that seems to fill our world. Amorphous shapes intrude into Stubbs’ picture plane, fragmenting the surface: it is as though the physicality of the painting is coming up against the pixilation of the digital image. Yet there is an overriding seductiveness in these works: the perfection of the finish and the boldness of the palette alleviate the chaos of the visual explosion. This is picture making being interrogated in a serious, sensual and often irreverent way.

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