Rejecting the traditional practice of gallery affiliation, Lawrie selects each exhibition site as other artists might select a sitter. Only then does he begin to paint, working with the space, as if painting a portrait.
Alastair Lawrie: A Prospective was an enormously ambitious undertaking involving forty-one 60”x 48” canvases, four production teams and three bars for the vernissage. Will Alsop and GarbeUK had recently redeveloped the venue, Victoria House, Bloomsbury Square.
A Prospective sees a number of significant stylistic developments: abstract forms have eclipsed all traces of figuration; colour is superseded by surface texture; and lighting becomes an additional palette.
From the title right down to the each individual brushstroke, Lawrie plays with notions of time and metamorphosis. As the building itself lies between two stages of completion so the monolithic canvases present an ineffable meaning in flux.
The sensation of wandering through rows of monochromes in a vast space feels like walking through an enormous painting. At no point can one see the whole, but with every turn and shift in perspective a greater idea of the picture may be had.
Each individual painting in the prospective is constructed in a series of layers. Each layer involves abstraction and figuration, and colourful and achromatic elements. A top sprayed layer reduces the underlying image to a series of ciphers.
Each painting has an immutable purity that harmonises with the others to create a visual symphony within the space.
