Sebastian Black, remembering of Giorgio Morandi and The Great Gatsby

 

One of the first impression of Sebastian Black’s paintings is their Morandian coyness. Although some of them turn out to be rather colorful, this aspect is never overwhelming as much as the silent shapes that form the subject. It comes with no surprise that the Italian modernist master serves here as a parallel to Black who investigates with a contemporary and urban twist the lesson of past avangarde movements such as Constructivism and Suprematism. And like Morandi painted the same set of cups and jars with nearly invisible changes over and over again, the young American artist re-thinks the template of his earlier Puppy paintings in what appears to become a study on shape, color, layers and eventually, human body as the hand clearly visible at the bottom right in “Pink Blink” indicates. The association between the canine and the feminine is further investigated through garments, made in collaboration with India Donaldson at the centre of the exhibition Unique Newarks, on the point of intersection, also in this case, between the form and a effective kind of story telling (in two parts… )

 

 

January 14, 2014