Glenn Littlechild’s painting achieves the extremely difficult feat of engaging with the legacy of Abstract Expressionism in a way that manages to be both contemporary and interesting. Whereas Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko were insistent about the correct way to understand their abstract images as expressions of sublime experience, the paintings exhibited here remain ambivalent about the communicative potential of their symbols and gestures. Some of these symbols are conceived as indexical of meanings that Littlechild works out on the always-evolving chalkboards that accompany his work. They refer to ideas about the relation of ancient cultures to alien civilisation, attempting to capture or explain something of the intense, or sublime, experiences the artist cites as the inspiration for the paintings. This hybrid of abstraction and conspiracy theory is original and compelling, and undertaken with absolute sincerity. It manages to be equally about abstraction, the communication of feeling, and popular culture.


grethtones says
I love the artwork!
posted at 03:22pm Aug 04 PST