From Andrew Frost…
Something that is axiomatic is something that is self-evidently true. Taking Axiom as the title for his latest solo show at Martin Browne Contemporary, Michael Cusack proposes that in the self-contained world of his paintings truth is established, that it’s without question or troubling uncertainty. And in one regard at least this is true: Cusack’s painting are hermetically pure, a finely balanced combination of gestural elements that hang in a white space of judicious over-painting that in confuses the eye’s ability to interpret what is foreground and what’s background. It’s a formula for making images that Cusack has explored for some years now and in their absolute purity that are unassailable.
The titles of individual paintings cite artists whose work supports and perhaps inspires Cusack’s own art – [Jean] Arp’s organic sculptures, [Alexander] Calder’s metal forms, and [Ferdinand] Leger’s constructions. A few jokers in the pack like [Saul] Steinberg suggest that not everything is so contained in the abstracted realm of Cusack’s coloured clouds and white storms, a degree of self regard, and even doubt might just be creeping into the axiomatic universe.
Until April 27
Martin Browne Contemporary, Paddington
Pic: Michael Cusack ?Steinberg, 2014 ?Mixed media on linen ?90 x 120 cm.
They are also a distillation of intense physicality, seen in the strong brushwork and repeated layering, sanding back and re layering, into pools of stillness and containment.