From Sharne Wolff…
Blurring the line between painting and sculpture, the 1960s witnessed many young artists experimenting with geometric abstraction using flat blocks of colour and ‘shaped canvases’. It’s from these roots and his lifelong exploration of colour that artist Sydney Ball, whose artistic career began at that time, developed the groundwork for his latest of three series entitled Infinex III. Comprising a number of shaped canvas paintings, the show also features four new works where Ball has painted with automotive enamel on an aluminium base. With the addition of this shiny new medium, Ball propels the concept of the shaped painting toward a more contemporary form.
Ball’s shapes are worked up from thumbnail sketches using the theories of Euclidian geometry but it doesn’t take a mathematician to note his strong reliance on the triangle. Flying across the gallery walls looking like two-dimensional origami, the kinetic potential of Ball’s sharp edged shapes is realised. When singled out, each work contains its own inner dynamism. After so many years of immersing himself in the joys and potential of colour, Ball uses intuition to produce these spirited combinations. Often anchoring the pictures with primary blue, red or yellow he progresses through a pencil box of shades. Despite their apparent simplicity, time spent with each painting makes the viewer work harder as the eye strives to join points, to draw lines and to search for shapes that may or may not be there.
Until December 20
Sullivan and Strumpf Fine Art, Zetland
Pic: Sydney Ball Infinex #47 2014 automotive enamel on aluminium, 143 x 342 x 4 cm
