Embedded within the hard lines, sharp angles, and bold colours of legendary Australian artist Sydney Ball’s geometric, abstract, hard-edged paintings is 81 years of life experience and knowledge and insight gained over a career spanning five decades, including two stints in New York in the 1960s where he became acquainted with the likes of Mark Rothko, William De Kooning, and Robert Motherwell.In the third series of his Infinex works, “Infinex III,” which are currently on show at Sullivan+Strumpf in Sydney until December 20, Ball continues to challenge the conventions and boundaries of the medium of painting, taking as his point of departure his renowned Modular works of the 1960s, which he created after his first stint in New York.“Infinex III” is a landmark series for Ball who for the first time has created works out of powder coated aluminium (car metal) which can be displayed outdoors.Drawing inspiration from Euclidean geometry, which he uses to create “a visual language in geometry form,” and using his extensive knowledge and intuitive understanding of colour, Ball has created a series of boldly coloured, distinctly rhythmical works that challenge viewers to question their perceptions of positive and negative space, engage with the the language of colour and shape in its purest form, and contemplate their concept of the medium of painting.Exhibiting a level of restraint and precision that could only be gained from a lifetime of experience and experimentation, Ball intuitively refines and knowledgeably choreographs the essential elements of painting, unleashing the true potentiality of colour and shape.“The works are an orchestration of individual shapes that are related to each other in various combinations in a contemporary context. Infinite is a word I associate as a title with ‘boundless possibilities, light, means, quality,’” said Ball in the book “TOWARDS A NEW ART: Essays on the background to abstract art.”“Like the Structure series these new works rely on architectonic form and again relate to the creative structures of the architects Zahar Hadid and Frank Gehry whose individual forms are related to each other in a variety of combinations.”Follow @ARTINFO_AusSydney Ball: Infinex III from Sullivan + Strumpf on Vimeo.
↧