The Painting Game

In response to the exhibition: The Gap: Selected Abstract Art from Belgium, curated by Luc Tuymans, Professor David Rayson, Head of Painting at The Royal College of Art, and a practicing artist will explore the on-going moves that artists continually play out, focusing particularly on painters that reflect and respond through the fluid medium of painting.

This talk will begin to explore how artists navigate the textual and visual nods of the historic and new-ness individually to collectively recognized historic references, trawling the well-known through pastiche, homage and wanton disregard. Sometimes sampling from newly ‘found’ sources, re-representing alternative ways of thinking, all while trying to make sense of their art practices as meaningful and rewarding personal narratives.

Often groups of artists are drawn to particular period or conceptual zeitgeist, and by default often collectively ‘fly-over’ and disassociate themselves from other historical    positions or awkward tendencies. As this loop goes round and gathers speed, we are all aware that what these poles are often reversed, rejected, revisited, revised or is simply all mashed into a hybrid with what has known to repel. As in this exhibition, that can create clusters of collective thinking, and interestingly: ‘gaps’

Image credit: David Rayson, Fields on Fire, 2010, Ink on Paper, Courtesy: the artist