Penny Siopis
Viscous World: Chaos finds magenta skies and nothing dies, 2022
glue, ink & oil on canvas
40 x 30 x 4.5 cm
15 3/4 x 11 3/4 x 1 3/4 in
15 3/4 x 11 3/4 x 1 3/4 in
PSI 012
A painting installation of around 17 works of different dimensions. Each component is an autonomous world as well as part of the larger painting body. Connections between individuals are often...
A painting installation of around 17 works of different dimensions.
Each component is an autonomous world as well as part of the larger painting body. Connections between individuals are often oblique, allusive, but still relational. This is manifest through particular kinds of materiality, rhythms created by the directional flows of the medium, colour, hints of ‘figures’ communing across their borders and glue spills that break boundaries. The spaces of the exposed wall between each entity are both a means of connection, and rupture. An essential part of the work.
In being paintings, they are imagined worlds, their bodies speaking in many tongues and of myriad things. Their overarching title makes much of their viscosity and opacity. It is not easy to see through them. But imponderable questions about collectivity, fragmentation, contingency, relationality, hospitality, vulnerability … and a sense that they bear an imprint of the day.
Each component is an autonomous world as well as part of the larger painting body. Connections between individuals are often oblique, allusive, but still relational. This is manifest through particular kinds of materiality, rhythms created by the directional flows of the medium, colour, hints of ‘figures’ communing across their borders and glue spills that break boundaries. The spaces of the exposed wall between each entity are both a means of connection, and rupture. An essential part of the work.
In being paintings, they are imagined worlds, their bodies speaking in many tongues and of myriad things. Their overarching title makes much of their viscosity and opacity. It is not easy to see through them. But imponderable questions about collectivity, fragmentation, contingency, relationality, hospitality, vulnerability … and a sense that they bear an imprint of the day.