A text written to accompany ’I have no use for the truth’; an exhibition of six new paintings by six artists; Mark Crofton Bell, Anna Choi, Trevor Kiernander, Michael Lawton, Michelle McKeown and Ellen Stanford. The show opens this Thursday (10th February 2011) at 38b Peckham Rye. http://www.artlicks.com/events/1580/i-have-no-use-for-the-truth?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Art+Licks+this+week+-+07022011&utm_content=Art+Licks+this+week+-+07022011+CID_6fb50e3cd5b490252867ab7d6a15c8ca&utm_source=Campaign+Monitor&utm_term=Read+More
When I look at paintings it is only the unexpected or beautiful, (and maybe sexy, because I think that’s probably different from beautiful,) that stay with me after I’ve left them. The only ones that I want to return to; that inspire me to make work myself.
When I look at paintings I have no use for verisimilitude; I am not interested in seeing something painted in a focal clarity that even a camera struggles to give us. I am not really interested in psychological truth; not at the expense of surface.
Paintings can tell stories, reveal psychosis, capture sensation, evoke an atmosphere, but all of these endeavours should be abandoned if the painting demands it: If the painting could be taken somewhere more interesting.
Everything else is just a way in and therefore all subjects are equally valid; are just a platform upon which to tackle a question.
Perhaps these questions have always existed; (and that’s why we return to old paintings.) And when we are painting we are not looking for solutions, just hypotheses, and I want beautiful or interesting hypotheses.
When I am writing I am after the truth because I am referring to something else. When I make a painting I am making something new: A referent.
Good paintings are liars, are shifty, they are inscrutable, they hide things, but we don’t care, we want to be deceived.
A painting should be as accurate as a good story.
Sometimes a painting just ‘feels right’ but that isn’t the truth, just a very plausible lie.
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