CASCADE: Dominic Beattie

dominic beattie

CASCADE JGM GALLERY

Published by JGM Gallery, on the occasion of the exhibition Dominic Beattie - Cascade March 8th - April 14th 2018 Introduction by Jennifer Guerrini Maraldi Accompanying text by Martin Maloney Publication designed by Alice Wilson Exhibition photography by Damian Griffiths JGM Gallery 24 Howie Street London SW11 4AY info@jgmgallery.com ISBN 978-1-9998458-3-4 © 2018 JGM Gallery and the artists.

All rights reserved.

dominic beattie CASCADE

8th March - 14th April 2018

Contents Introduction by Jennifer Guerrini Maraldi Not So Straight Edge. A Studio Visit Remembered

by Martin Maloney Foreword by Dominic Beattie Works

I have observed Dominic Beattie’s work for some time - loving his painting, with its mesmerizing patterns and hypnotic colour.

We are thrilled to launch Dominic’s new work in this exhibition CASCADE - also a perfect celebration of JGM Gallery’s first anniversary. Our exhibition space, next to the RCA’s Battersea campus, has prompted a fresh and exciting new dialogue between contemporary Indigenous art, and international contemporary art practices.

Initially discussing the work with Dominic, it was refreshing to talk about how he has regularly looked at Aboriginal painting as a source of inspiration. There is something of the infinite in these works, the title CASCADE acknowledges a continuum, a falling edgeless element that Dominic has compared to the amorphous, expanding, never ending patterns and mark making found in Indigenous works Our visits to Dominic’s studio over the past few months have been both impressive and stimulating, watching how he has responded to making work to exhibit at JGM Gallery.

Collectors familiar with his making abilities will see a pairing down in his approach but with an added finesse that lays bare the decision making.

In the more confined space of Dominic’s studio we are familiar with the work, however seeing it breathe and come to life at JGM Gallery as Dominic envisaged is really exciting.

CASCADE is an explosion of colour and pattern, and sees Dominic install his first wall painting, filling the entire expanse of a street facing wall, confronting visitors as they approach the gallery.

CASCADE also includes items of furniture, developed with the design input of his partner Lucia Buceta. The pieces are as described; ‘Studio Chair’, ‘Studio Bench’ - items that have been developed to fulfil a function, paired down again with his decision making clearly on show.

Described by Martin Maloney and Dominic himself in the essays that accompany this exhibition are reflections on what has informed the work, Maloney describes as radical Beattie’s alignment with textile design, the same too could be said of his citing of Aboriginal painting. The honesty and openness of these paintings that have pushed the artist to the far edges of his abilities, in his concentration, skill and discipline are both beautiful and functional.

With an entirely new series of work, CASCADE is a Dominic Beattie exhibition that has not been seen before.

Jennifer Guerrini Maraldi Director JGM Gallery

Not So Straight Edge A Studio Visit Remembered.

By Martin Maloney

In his new series of paintings, Dominic Beattie has made works which look more mainstream than his earlier ones. Gone is his old look of found odds and ends, transformed into unlikely painterly combinations. The new paintings are still modernist abstractions, but they are surprisingly more polite looking than his earlier works. Beattie has made a group of hard edged, two-colour paintings of blocks of repeated and reversed patterns. The new works are combined of smaller sized panels that make up a large painting. What happens on the surface is very pared down. They have a minimal severity which initially might be taken for a homage to the serial painters of 1960s. Reoccurring shapes are laid out in a grid. At first glance, they recall paintings based on systems made by artists who believed a work of art should explain its making through its visual organisation. They worked with strict rules and made paintings using geometry akin to mathematical or scientific analysis.

Dominic Beattie has his own agenda for dipping into the past. He asks us to rethink our highbrow associations with paintings which present grids of repeated shapes. He has not set up a system of logic to unlock his sequences of repetitions. This artist has turned the legacy of serial painting on its head and is asking us to see these grid paintings as just blocks of coloured patterns. They acknowledge their alignment with the history of 1960’s serial abstraction. But in doing so, they end up being a celebration of the undervalued and overlooked legacy of textile design.

Beattie’s earlier works could have been taken as loutish attacks on the modernist cannon.

He made brutal, elegant and sometimes crude looking works which examined some of the conventions and conceits of early twentieth century art. He wanted to remove from classic modernism the patina and grandness of history, in order to show us the geometric gestures of modern abstraction were simple, radical, unassuming and modestly made.

Beattie’s new abstract paintings are hard edged. They are planned and less improvised than previous works, which gives them a slicker finish. On my visit to his studio, my first thought was, that they look like conventionally acceptable modern art. “You’ve become goody-two shoes. They look so normal” I said. “Yes. They are supposed to”, he replied.

I was caught off guard. Had the scrap heap rebel turned tables, I wondered. In a limited palette of two colours, (although in more generous moments this does expand into four tones) these paintings employ the formalism of a grid; familiar and typical of certain types of contemporary art. A small motif is repeated and rearranged. Sometimes the placement of the blocks give rise to additional pattern making but any deviation in a block of pattern is knocked into shape by the rigour of the grid. I was reminded of the displays of communist regime mass gymnastics - where you see the bigger picture and then realise it is broken down into individual pieces. I wondered if he was making a parallel between hard edge abstraction and a totalitarian experience of perfection through total order. I hadn’t thought of flat and hard edged painting like that before. Beattie’s rhythms and repetitions although austere are not joyless. Inspired by the block printing of textile design as much as by 1960s serial painting, the works initial rigour gives way to reveal a decorative and even pretty exploitation of their geometric possibilities.

The freedom to invent and respond to that invention characterised the artist’s earlier work.

A degree of randomness was utilised in their construction. An improvisation and a visual ad-libbing, allowed the earlier paintings to evolve. That working method became stale and Beattie could see that to continually use it would become a trap. He went on a mission: to challenge himself to approach painting with a new rigour. He chucked out his anything goes work methods and brought in some discipline. He made paintings that came from drawings, following the visual information they set. I asked if his desire to make works which were tightly organised was a reaction to his previous sloppiness. He told me that he was trying to steer clear of the beaten up look he had championed in earlier work. He was trying to be as neat as he could possibly be. It was clear Dominic Beattie had set out to make paintings on his best behaviour.

There are uneven applications of colour in places and mismatches of pattern and colour, but you have to look hard to find them. The accidents and incidental mistakes of making are refined and reduced. “They are very straight” I said. Conventional is probably what I meant.

“They look like you have deliberately set out to make art”. Previous work relied on ad hoc decisions and redesigns. Rapid and spontaneous changes of mind resulted in an odd object, which often looked unfinished, yet cheekily declared itself as art.

“The paintings are supposed to be straight edge,” Beattie told me. He was referring to an offshoot of punk subculture, one which got rid of the clichés of a rebellious appearance to look, for all intents and purposes as conventional and even at times conservative. Straight edge was a sub culture conceived to challenge the emptiness of an edgy radical look.

It despised the hackneyed, visual conventions which relied on stereotypes of rebellion.

Followers of the straight edge look displayed their radicalism by copying and imitating a clean cut, mainstream conformity. Their highly coded look was almost hidden in plain sight.

Paul Feeley, “Athens” (1962) Oil-based enamel on canvas

In complete contradiction to the ideal of the serial painters of the past, Beattie told me that he wanted people to view his new paintings as beautiful. I liked this idea, but would the viewer know that within their conformist look these paintings embodied a rejection of one of the main tenets of serial art: to make art which did not rely on subjective decisions and eschewed the idea of beauty? I wondered if it was radical to align oneself to the art of the past yet try to undermine its authority?

Do they look like a Dominic Beattie painting I asked. “What does one of those look like?” he genuinely enquired. “Well, they are abstract,” he said. I regretted putting myself in a position where I had to give a running commentary on the work to the person who had actually made it. Looking around the studio I could see the range of works made over the years and the materials used to make them. I could see many different styles, methods and techniques had been employed and that there was no such thing as a typical Dominic Beattie painting. “I like abstract art” he reassured me. “I look at it a lot. I always have.”

He then reminded me of an earlier conversation where I said I didn’t think of his work as abstract. Although I didn’t recall that conversation myself, I told him I didn’t think abstract art was a special division of art making in a different league from regular art. I didn’t feel I needed any special knowledge to look at abstract art. The abstract category was redundant.

I asked how he came up with the design or the master plan for each painting. Notebooks came out. Studies on card spilled across the floor. Nothing is made on the computer. Endless permutations of Photoshop possibilities are avoided. All the design elements are drawn by hand in notepads or on paper. Doodles he called them. “I take an initial drawing and use it as the design for a work. In this series, I wanted to make a repeat without a break I wanted the pattern to feel endless. I wanted them to be self contained yet also to suggest to the viewer that they were just samples of a bigger pattern which could go on forever,” he said, enjoying the contradiction. We went on to discuss to the position and placement of the motif and the organisation of the repeat of the block. The modular arrangement that joins many panels together allows the artist to decide while he is making the work, if the final piece needs more panels. Although tightly conceived at the start, there was an intuitive feeling in the making of the painting for what was right and what would work.

Sonia Delaunay Prismes electriques 1914

“How do you decide on the colour” I asked, remembering his distinctive palette from earlier works. I could see here, that in the choice of odd and rather awkward colour combinations, there were certain ideas left over from previous works, despite the fact that, here, the colours were carefully chosen and had been reduced down to just two.

He showed me the work of the American artist Paul Feely who died in 1966. Flat, hard edged, colourful, minimalist works, painted in a reduced language of geometric shapes: frontal, restrained and severe, as if he was shrinking away from the Abstract Expressionists who were his contemporaries. In Beattie’s new paintings, I saw the influence of Keith Haring, A.R.Penk, Robert Indiana. We both agreed the spirit of Sonia Delaunay hovered over them with her liberating lack of distinction between painting and textile design, her legacy seemed to give these works permission to exist. I searched for all the Dominic Beattie tropes and saw his familiar language of shape and pattern.

A feature of the earlier work was the use of the hand. Here that has been reduced and is not so obvious. Beattie avoids using paint on a brush. He prefers techniques which are more controllable and less messy, although strangely enough brushes are visible in the studio.

Spontaneous and improvised within a tight format the drawings are made from a grid and filled in. Beattie studied painting at Camberwell, where he had a secondary area of study in animation, and told me of the trippy, graphic films he made as a student. I could see the legacy of the classical abstract animation of Oskar Fischlinger 1940s films and Len Lye’s work from the 1930s in how shapes of colour danced next to one another as though they are caught in mid flow.

“I am not trying to make rebellious work,” he said smiling at my suggestion. ”I am trying to make something beautiful and colourful.” And as I sat in front of them, I could certainly see that is what he had achieved. We talked more about what were the inspirations and headed again back to textile design. I chanced my arm. “Are these just Orla Kiely designs made into paintings?” “I value good textile design as much as I value painting” he told me, but Orla Kiely wasn’t a textile designer he had much truck with. “Do you like Cath Kidston,” I asked.

Orla Kiely’s curved designs didn’t interest him and Cath Kidston was too flowery and too

Elemental Form, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, 1917

feminine for his taste, he gruffly told me stroking his beard and looking down at his plaid woodcutters shirt. I felt I was talking with a connoisseur who is happy to explain the relative merits of contemporary textile design without feeling that impinged on the seriousness of his work or his masculinity. In the past artists would have run a mile at the suggestion that abstract painting had anything in common with textile design, but in Beattie’s work there is a celebration of that idea; that the worlds of painting and textile design aren’t so far apart, and to celebrate that in painting seemed radical in intention.

Still thinking about beauty, I suggested that these new painting weren’t ugly enough and that his other works had a deliberately ugly quality. Ugliness is often a reassurance that you are in the presence of art. What would art look like if it wasn’t deliberately ugly? We discussed the idea of making a work with the intention of it being beautiful and how that could be confused with making something pretty. Beauty, in these works, he told me, was in the handling of the material and the organisation of the colour. The strange thing was, pretty to him didn’t seem like a pejorative term. “I have deliberately made a bunch of pretty works and I feel happy to put them out there.” The old rebellious spirit of sticking two fingers up to convention, which I thought was missing in the work was staring me straight in the face.

“I grew up on YBA art. That has been my guide. I thought that art had to be radical and personal” he told me. “I am making a self-conscious effort to make beautiful works even if that seemed to go against the grain. I always try to make my work as simple as possible so that the viewer can see the decisions I have made. I want people to see what I have done. I am not an artist trying to make profound statements and don’t have any political intentions.

Nathalie Du Pasquier

My paintings are personal in terms of colour choices and the touch of my hand in the making of them but it stops there. They are not confessional,” he confides.

When they embark on a new series artists reflect on the work they have made in the past.

New works are made which confirm and reinforce their thinking. Sometimes a new body of work is conceived to challenge the artist (and admirers of their work) and this makes them reconsider their methods, materials, strategies and ideas. Beattie looked around and saw that the bricolage approach to making had been adopted by others and what had once seemed radical as a way of working, now seemed conventional. “I wanted to make a series which questioned all the ways I would normally make work,” he said. “My methods, the materiality and the look of works I made in the past had become a crutch and I wanted to work in a style away from that”.

All Dominic Beattie’s work celebrates the undervalued and the overlooked. At first sight, these new works reminded me of the kid who turns up at school wearing an ironed, white shirt with a tie pushed all the way up to the top to meet its collar. Perhaps in the way that they subvert the hard-edged abstraction of the past, these paintings are in fact closer to the classroom rebel who attends school dressed in the hooligan-look of a double-knotted tied extravaganza, hanging half way down a shirt front. I was happy to look at and look into the making of these new paintings. I understood how the artist incorporated his aims into the hard-edged abstraction of the past. I left humming a mantra, that hard-edged had become straight edge went home and earnestly wrote down what he had told me.

Preliminary Sketchbook Drawings

Preliminary Sketchbook Drawings

Sketchbook Preliminary Drawings

Lucia Buceta varnishing components in the studio 2017 Studio Furniture 2018 Dominic Beattie in the Studio 2018

The Cascade series of paintings have been gestating for a long time. Almost twenty years ago I saw a solo exhibition of Patrick Caulfield works at the Hayward Gallery.

His use of flat colours, and black line to separate them, resonated with me.

As a child I had a pretty big obsession with all types of cartoons and comics, Caulfields style reminded me of the graphics I had looked at, and copied for years. The show broadened my idea of masterful painting and gave me permission to incorporate my graphical leanings, rather than hide them and aim for a more traditional type of representation.

My work has always flirted with the hard edge, many times I have pursued it earnestly and failed, creating a clumsy hybrid of amateur and knowing.

The Cascade paintings are different because to make them I follow a strict set of rules. I have never made work like this before. They are slow to make and it was difficult to deliberately avoid the accidental mistakes that have become integral to my work. But I felt that artistic development required me to push my technical limitations and test my concentration levels.

In 2015 I designed a chair with the architect Lucia Buceta. The Studio Chair has become an important object to me. Making it helped me realise that I see design as being on equal terms as art. We have expanded the chair concept into a range of furniture, that I now like to show alongside my paintings. Whilst developing the chair, I dyed the mdf surface with ink as an experiment, this became the standard method of colouring the furniture.

I played with the dyeing technique for two years before realising its potential for making hard edge painting. The realisation coincided with an intense period of drawing repeat patterns of varying complexity. Combining these two threads of my practice has resulted in the Cascade paintings.

They are simple works, more reduced than I am used to. All the major decisions are made in the drawings. The making process is very automatic and I’m always surprised by the finished works when I hang them in my studio.

I think that artists always have a core area of interest they orbit. As we circle it, we are at times attracted and later repelled. Everything I make is a variation of the same theme.

Colour, line, rhythm and the hand made. These works are probably the closest to the core I have been.

Dominic Beattie 2018

Untitled (orange/blue) Ink on plywood 122 x 122cm 2017

Untitled (purple/indigo) Ink on plywood 61 x 183cm 2018

Untitled (crimson/cyan) Ink on plywood 183 x 183cm 2017

Untitled (indigo/purple) Ink on plywood 122 x 63cm 2018

Untitled (turquoise/p-grey) Ink on plywood 122 x 183cm 2017

Untitled (blue/yellow) Ink on plywood 183 x 244cm 2017

Untitled (pink/green) Ink on plywood 244 x 183cm 2017

Untitled (cyan/crimson) Ink on plywood 102 x 73cm 2017

Untitled (red/blue) Ink on plywood 182 x 122cm 2017

Untitled (yellow/blue) Ink on plywood 153 x 122cm 2017

Untitled (pink/teal) Ink on plywood 73 x 102cm 2017

Untitled (orange/p-grey) Ink on plywood 61 x 122cm 2018

Cascade Unique Print Series Numbered one to Six Clockwise from top left Ink on paper 42 x 30 cm

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2018 Cascade, JGM Gallery, London 2017 Solo Presentation, Art Rotterdam, Van Nelle Fabriek, Rotterdam 2015 Studio, Fold Gallery, London Solo Presentation for The Saatchi Gallery, The Churchill Hyatt Hotel, London 2014 Albeit, Fold Gallery, London

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2018 Art Herning, Denmark Form, Cob Gallery, London Destroyed by Shadows, The Cornerstone Gallery, Liverpool 2017 Parallel Lines, Charlotte Fogh Gallery, Aarhus Privateview Gallery presents, Turin Code Art Fair, Copenhagen Unnatural Vibers, Unit 3 Projects, London Da Árbore Á Cadeira, The City Of Culture, Galicia 50 X 50 II, The Saatchi Gallery, London 2016 Jealous Needs You, Jealous Gallery, London Imperfect Reverse, Anglia Ruskin Gallery, Cambridge Imperfect Reverse, Camberwell College, London The Fantastic Journeys of Energy, Kappatos Gallery, Athens Kaleidoscope, Fold Gallery, London (Curator) The 13th Room, The Hospital Club London 2015 UK/Raine, The Saatchi Gallery, London (Painting Prize Winner) 54:68:81, Unit 3 Projects, London Print, Horatio Jr., London The Dream of Modern Living, Warrington Museum Invited, curated by Flora Fairbairn and Philly Adams, 9 Hillgate Street, London Creekside Open, selected by Richard Deacon, APT Gallery, London Creekside Open, selected by Lisa Milroy, APT Gallery, London Contemporary British Abstraction, Se9 Container Gallery, London Fin, Fold Gallery, London 2014 A Union of Voices, Horatio Jr., London Here, there and somewhere in between (Project 1), Horatio Jr., London As Wide As A Door Is Open: Material Images, FOLD Gallery, London Summer Saloon Show, Lion and Lamb Gallery, London Symbolic Logic, Identity Art Gallery, Hong Kong New Order II: British Art Today, The Saatchi Gallery, London

BIBLIOGRAPHY

2017 Unnatural Vibers, exhibition review, Abcrit, May 2017 Da Ábore Á Cadeira, Exhibition catalogue, April 2017 2016 Kaleidoscope, The Week, August 2016 Approaches to Colour, a review by Laurence Noga, Saturation Point, August 2016 Kaleidoscope, Patterns That Connect, August 2016 Ambit Magazine, Issue 224, May 2016 2015 UK/Raine, Exhibition Catalogue, November 2015 Studio, exhibition review, The Week, September 2015 Studio, exhibition review, ArtLyst, September 2015 Studio, exhibition review, Apollo magazine, September 2015 Studio, exhibition review, Saturation Point, September 2015 2014 Abstract Critical Interview, by Sam Cornish, July 2014 New Order II: British Art Today, The Saatchi Gallery, Review by Brian Sewell, The Evening Standard New Order II: British Art Today, The Saatchi Gallery, Exhibition catalogue, January 2014

COLLECTIONS The Saatchi Gallery

Dominic Beattie March 8th to April 14th 2018

JGM GALLERY 24 Howie Street London SW11 4AY