TRACES

A work of art is a construction. When an artist makes an object, he or she is leaving traces that reveal the way of constructing. It is his or her handwriting. The exhibition at Slewe Gallery brings work by four artists from different countries and generation together that shows marks, grids and helplines that were necessary to establish the final art work. The exhibition Traces with works by Adam Colton, Alan Johnston, Caro Jost and Stanislav Kolíbal opens Friday April 21 and will last until May 27.

The Czech drawer and sculptor STANISLAV KOLIBAL (1925, Orlová) is the strongest representative of the constructivist movement in Eastern Europe that piloted the clear abstract geometrical art through the oppressive days of communist regime.
The Scottish artist ALAN JOHNSTON (1945, Edinburgh) makes huge wall drawings out of miniscule repetitive scribbles that relate to the architecture of the site. Small wooden panels with fields of such scribbles together with black and white planes serve as models.
ADAM COLTON (1957, Manchester), known for organic objects in off whitish coloured polyurethane or aluminium, shows the grid with numbers used to blow up the scale from model to final sculpture.
CARO JOST (1965, München) shows frottages on canvas of historical pavements. The series is a pilgrimage, going into the footsteps of the great New York painters of the twentieth century. Dust and grit from the pavement in front of Barnett Newman’s studio has stuck in the surface of white paint.