Walter Price - Pearl Lines
Walking into Modern Art’s Helmet Row venue it’s impossible to miss the dark brown walls and the lush, matched carpet. Even if this is your first visit the white-walled foyer makes it obvious that brown, and the thickly padded soft floor, isn’t their normal decor. The latter changes the atmosphere of this polished concrete warehouse gallery, creating a care-home level warmth that was more than welcome on the chilly, grey day of my visit.
It was so warm, in fact, that I was sweating and de-layering before I’d even got to the third work, but even then I’d already observed something noted in the gallery text: “the brown environment attunes the viewers’ eyes to see more clearly the particular combinations of colours and forms throughout all the works.” Many of the works indeed “pop” off the walls. In particular, the backless purple frames set around smaller abstracts are incredibly eye catching. Except there was one question I couldn’t stop asking myself: Are these even any good?
The works are generally abstract compositions augmented with familiar elements that appear randomly across multiple canvasses. The outlines of sofas and over-sized easy chairs feature frequently. Thick splotches of paint and elements of collage are layered on top of the scenes. Mohammed Ali makes an appearance. A few works toy with transparency: one motif involves the use of glitter and spray paint to obscure your view of something under glass, another concept sees a framed work of art completely wrapped in gaffer tape.
Looking more carefully, and knowing Price is a Black American, it’s easy to assume some pieces are intended to address institutional racism. One incorporates a photo of a black man being arrested. Another displays pink outlines of pigs, but a glance at the side of the canvas reveals the words ‘u cannot trust these’. Those are blatantly obvious but in other works the characters and collage elements are vague and uncertain. I was particularly confused by the randomly placed imagery of smartphone controls and web prompts. Sometimes the titles help (‘Understand Your Enemy’ and ‘When You See a Man Fall, Don’t Laugh, Learn’) and sometimes they don’t (‘Midnight’, ‘Purple Haze’).
There were enough of these curious insertions to occasionally keep my attention but most of the works made me shrug and walk right by. The abstractions felt random and purposeless, the visually recognisable elements weren’t meaningful to me and there’s not enough context in the compositions to help me understand their intentions. I generously assumed there might be too big a gap in race and culture for me to fully appreciate these, but it’s telling that the gallery text focuses solely on technique. My critical eye wondered what my reaction would have been had I seen these against white walls or in a less established gallery. Their mere presence in Modern Art grants them a level of reverence that I can’t ignore, but I also can’t ignore the fact that despite not really liking the aesthetics I can’t get them out of my head.
So are they any good? Who knows. I’m a still confused about their meaning but more than any other recent show the installation left me thinking less about the work and more about how both venue and environment influence and manipulate our impressions of an artist’s vision.
Plan your visit
‘Pearl Lines’ runs until 28 March.
Visit modernart.net and follow @stuartshavemodernart on Instagram for more info about the venue.
Visit the Walter Price Wikipedia page for more info about the artist.
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Check the What’s On page so you don’t miss any other great shows closing soon.
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