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C105
review
Dublin: Bridget
Riley
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Bridget
Riley: Magenta and Green, 2002; courtesy
Green on Red
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Bridget Riley
occupies a unique position in the history of art in that
she's practically a one-person (indeed, a one-woman) art
movement. While Vasarely and others come under the Op Art
banner, it is Riley's signature black-and-white works that
epitomise the movement. Their very success presents a challenge
to the artist: how to continue, without making 'more of
the same'? In this, her second solo exhibition at the Green
on Red Gallery, Riley has met the challenge with characteristic
rigour. The work retains the precision and sense of formal
control, while opening up to a variety of schemes of reference.
There is a sense of the artist happily uncovering the geometry
underlying natural phenomena. Magenta and Green,
2002, for example, evokes the dazzling play of sunlight
on water; other works suggest the lush, shimmering heat
of a garden in the South of France. Some of the work directly
quotes Matisse's cut-outs, while in others hints of Suprematist
constructions and the Impressionist masters hover more suggestively
on the sidelines. If the work lacks the dizzying, jackhammer-on-the-retina
effect of the sixties' work, this is more than compensated
for by the gentler, but no less intriguing, play of coloured
afterimages. As Goethe noted in his studies of afterimages,
they bring forth a more embodied space, a space which, in
Riley's hands, becomes habitable. It is a perfect summer
exhibition, and the Green on Red are to be congratulated
on securing it for Irish audiences.
Tanya
Kiang is Director of the Gallery of Photography, Dublin.
Bridget
Riley: New Painting, prints and studies,
Green on Red Gallery, June - August 2003
Article
reproduced from CIRCA 105, Autumn
2003, pp. 108.
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