POROUS PLANE exhibition of his art was in the GTG 2 years ago. Its spirit is present in the current installation of 15 exhibits dated from 1969 -2021. The installation in Gallery 1 posited a reminder of the older preference for large scale work, as if giving advice to the one that can be held in an embrace.
Climbing down from a billboard to a room.
Moreover, the palette reduced to black and white tones calls for a different levels of attention, imagination and consciousness. That moved from its symbiose with the sensual values to something that sides with Plato's concept of ideas. The exhibits visibly share a delight in "falling (and failing) rectangles".
His paintings habitually prefer a right angle, therefore Lennon's letting it fall at 45etc degrees matters. It is not a logical investigation of a fall, because it is not allowed to conclude. It is a suggestion that the fall may continue, go on, without fully predictable future.
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| Folded/Unfolded. acrylic on Belgian linen |
It maybe, that the changes Covid19 makes for us, has influence not only format, but also preference for drawing on newsprint paper and on the small size block pages: Sketches on death notices,2021, ink on newspaper.
Visible similarity with older work is deprived of scale and hues, with preference for shades of black and white. This reduction of means continues in changing the idea and concept known from the previous practice into this: fragmenting previous concept, starving it from polychromies. Both insist, on the first look, on a loss of some richness of values. Looking longer - echoes Josef Beuys's thinking about the mix of logic and its absence as more true to our place among the rest of the being. Puzzled at first by the distance between the reminiscences and absences of Porous Planes.
Then, in Gallery 2, a triptych, as in a medieval or renaissance or Bacon's triptych. The main story in the middle, and both the before and after stories on the wings. Or not... just three variation on the theme of interlocking rectangles. I prefer the first narrative: beginning, fully fledged idea, and folding it like a book, to end the imagination's easy flying... A palimpsest...(Palimpsest refers to writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for more writing. Often in the sense of something reused but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form.)
The Spectre drawings triptych 2021 (graphite & eraser on Arches paper) takes the motive from polychrome smaller variation on the theme of "porous plane", robs it of the hues, folds it. It feels like disabling the power of rectangle by neurotic anger with accuracy.
Next look, and the insecurity of how many planes are there, and the consciences of each searching for a stable position, offers another interpretations.
Mine, now, this morning, is of Covid19 destabilising our habits, securities, and hopes for tomorrow. The triptych admits the truth of the pandemic. In the middle, is the kernel of the meaning: a perfect rectangle falling back under the black weight of another, almost a half sized. On another look, it may be just sharp perspective angle of the same size. This intriguingly foregrounds our well rooted habits as unreliable, flying off out of the image. Or falling down. As in classical triptych, the middle panel tells the kernel of the story, e.g. Nativity, beginning. Then on its left would be Annunciation, and on the right Ascension. The left panel in the "Spectre...." shows the motive closed, as in a secret, and with uncertain definition, i.e. the smudges beneath the squares. The right hand panel is more decisive. Its lower edge is pristinely precise.
The gap between the heavy black energy at the top and the black mark near each of the "wings" lower frame is enigmatic, the gap works little like a promise.
Surprisingly or not, the installation welcomes the viewer with a small didactic image: Field of Vision diagram (2021, ink and pencil on Arches paper)
- Field of vision is the entire area that a person or animal is able to see when their eyes are fixed in one position
- .Field of vision - all of the points of the physical environment that can be perceived by a stable eye at a given moment. field of regard, visual field. visual percept, visual image - a percept that arises from the eyes; an image in the visual system.
- Is the visual field the same as the field of view?
Comparison reveals Lennon's familiarity with the scientific terminology.
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