Left: Djordje Ozbolt installation shot, Photo by Andy Keate, courtesy Herald St, London. Right: Jost Münster installation shot, Photo by Cameron Leadbetter, courtesy TINTYPE, London.
Of all the paths a painter might decide to follow from a relatively early stage, there are two that could be seen as equally limiting or full of potential, depending on your point of view. The first is a committed career working within the tiniest patch of artistic territory; say Geometric Abstraction for example. The second is a broader approach, wherein the artist acts as a kind of commentator on vast areas of visual culture, cherry-picking from all available forms and styles. The former approach suggests the role of field-worker, with the artist constantly getting their hands dirty through experimentation. The latter suggests a perhaps liberating detachment from the agonizing process of trialing new forms and combinations. Two concurrent shows in London, Jost Münster at TINTYPE and Djordje Ozbolt at HERALD ST would seem to represent, at least superficially, these two trajectories.
Jost Münster, New Neighbour 7, 2016, Acrylic on canvas, 152 cm x 117 cm, Photo by Cameron Leadbetter, courtesy TINTYPE, London.
Jost Münster produces canvases which are spare in incident but not minimal. They are slow to reveal their complexity, yet at the same time immediate in visual impact. They are also intentionally limited in graphic vocabulary but not limiting in interpretive potential. In the main gallery space at TINTYPE, the canvases have been hung at comfortable intervals. The sense of dialogue between the paintings is emphasized by a temporary partition, which blocks off the potentially distracting view of the gallery office, and creates a third wall in the space. The visitor walks into a multi-directional conversation between equal parties. The canvases, being equal in dimensions (152 x 117 cm), encourage us to register their differences in other ways. Münster’s refined and consistent treatment; chalky yet translucent washes of acrylic on unprimed canvas, allows him to use a selection of geometric devices whilst retaining an overall coherence across the series.
Jost Münster, Installation shot, Photo by Cameron Leadbetter, courtesy TINTYPE, London.
There might be the temptation to run with the same motif in various iterations across a series like this, but the artist has instead allowed subtle echoes into these paintings of many different lessons learned. The gestures themselves retain a rewarding amount of evidence of their imperfect manual production; an effect which is difficult to intentionally manufacture yet easy to lose through negligence. There is no sign of equivocation in these paintings, which appear to have been thought about intently over a long period but executed relatively quickly. The concept behind the installation, New Neighbours, reinforces the idea of a democratic dialogue between equal agents. Whilst sharing common qualities of scale and surface, the paintings are each highly idiosyncratic. Münster is evidently committed to exploring the capacity for paint to say a lot through limited means.
Djordje Ozbolt’s current show at HERALD ST’s Golden Square space is impressively well resolved as an understated installation of painting and sculpture. There are four paintings in total and one sculptural installation, ‘Let the sunshine in’, a series of African totems cast in resin in an assortment of loud colours. The paintings seem to depict similarly coloured sculptural objects presented against neutral grey backgrounds. It is tempting to imagine that they were painted from real-life mock-ups, and if this was the case, I would love to see them.
Djordje Ozbolt, Deflection, 2016, Acrylic on canvas, 152.4 cm x 121.9 cm / 60 x 48 in, Photo by Andy Keate, courtesy Herald St, London.
Looking back at Ozbolt’s project over a number of years, we see the artist navigating through a large stock of iconic imagery in a series of carefully staged presentations. In many paintings the traditional vernacular of what might be High Renaissance landscape painting is blown apart by choreographed interventions from the future: Picasso heads, Henry Moore’s reclining figures or Mickey Mouse’s silhouette. This is iconography which to us is just as much in the past as the landscape into which it appears to have been beamed. When elements are alien to each other but presented as equal, it is hard to refer to any one as an anachronism. This is witty play on the notion of a linear narrative within art history. Indeed there are cohabitants in Ozbolt’s paintings which come from cultures that were never part of that assumed narrative to begin with. The recurring motif of the African totem in some paintings is presented as a form in its own right, in addition to appearing in others in the form of its post Cubist assimilation.
Ozbolt tracks a convincing path through the territory between painting, sculpture and installation. But the overwhelming sense is that the artist has an uncorrupted love of painting and a genuine attachment to the vocabulary from which he cherry-picks his imagery. In previous work Ozbolt presented us with a range of disparate motifs grafted onto the same surface with a light painterly touch. In his current show the artist’s visual play has been refined further from this intentional sparring between unexpected elements to a kind of visual double-play within the same vernacular. Geometric constructions perform double functions. A precarious tower of simplified geometric shapes casts an anthropomorphic shadow in the piece entitled ‘Deflection’. Similar geometric assemblages stand obediently for a family snapshot in ‘La famiglia’. And the eponymous ‘Bulgarian weight lifter’ appears to us alternately as a face with eight ball eyes or a full dumbbell-carrying figure. The humour in Ozbolt’s painting is catchy. And unlike a host of artists whose apparent irreverence can often amount to little more than a cool play on visual culture, Ozbolt manages to invest his work with a more profound understanding of the forms he is using.
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