SERENA MCLAUGHLAN

MONOCHROME.

Artshouse 2nd - 19th November

Monochrome painting is not a new idea. The monochrome thought originates in religious images whether it be the flat blue of the Christian heaven or the subtle red and pink rectangles of Indian mystical miniatures born from tantric meditation. Some odd painters come very close to it. Matisse who had his own blue for instance or Allen Jones the prophet of the perfect stocking. A field of evenly graded paint texture or light can stand for the entire riches of the universe, human destiny and by implication the omnipresence of god. It can arouse infinite desire.

This infinity can also become the mirror for that supremely detached sensuality that can only express itself in luxuriant erotic excess, an optical overflow, like good wine poured over the tongue till the mouth is full. It can be conjured, not metaphorically but directly body and soul, by the qualities of paint, media, density, translucency, surface, depth. One might look to caress beautiful monochrome painting as one longs to see perfect skin in a golden afternoon light. The same optic nerves are being tickled, the same sensuality aroused.

The reductive, logical routes to monochrome painting the Malevich black square, the Reinhardt black canvas, Yves Klein Blue or John Nixon Orange are all alibis for the same painterly ambition, to give to paint and colour, those universal chameleons, the immanence that they have always lacked or seemed, to the painter, to lack. In fact nothing is more immediate, more provocative, than a rack of paint tubes or a Dulux decorator colour chart, even though they are the product of years if not centuries of chemical research and optical foreplay. Reason and desire are as much mismatched partners in the production of paint as the production of paintings.

The pursuit of absolute immanence by covering a surface with liquid colour is, always and forever, bound up with sensuality. The more sensual the process, the more absolute will be the presence of the finished work, the more the viewer can lose everything in its serene resonance.

All this is necessary as an introduction to Serena Mclaughan’s excellent, highly sensual show at Artshouse. It serves to head off those think who think sensuality is not serious and those too fragile to examine their own responses beyond the script.

Mclauchlan presents two kinds of work, small canvas panels about 20cm square and larger canvases 1m square and above. Scale matters in monochrome, paradoxically smaller works tends to be more succesful even though the standard reductive justifications for them suggest that size doesn’t matter. Small scale works also push the artist to work with depth into the canvas and overlapping layers of paint on it so that even the smallest area can expand to infinity.

In the small works Mclauchlan uses a mixture of oil and wax, so dense that it might well as well be encaustic. They might better be described as pre-monochromes, named for the dominant colour, suggested rather than produced by allowing pools of coloured paint to coagulate one on top of the other, so that light is trapped in each layer. Pools of semi liquid substance overflow the edges of each canvas as they congeal in a physical version of the sensual excess central to all monochromes. Two works, Orange and Pink, with their brooding honey browns and greys, are particularly impressive. Every small panel however emits resonates an extraordinary presence as one enters the multiple folds of colour behind its diffuse sensual surface. Sight and touch are condensed to one sense.

This is not a new way of working. In recent times Jasper Johns was the first to understand the possibilities offered by encaustic for a slow vision, a means to slow down the dismissive eye by raising the sensuality stakes through an invitation to strategic voyeurism. Johns of course used icons, American flags and so on. Mclauchan has no interest in imagery. She is in the process of staking out the parameters of a direct, painterly presence in terms of how she places the paint on the canvas, the induction of surface qualities, which, in themselves, constitute a universal image.

Some of her larger pieces are reminiscent of the earlier works of Ad Reinhardt in which colours were allowed to overlap each other into fluctuating greys. They are less consistent, less stable than the small panels. In some the overlapping paint layers drift and coagulate into series of dry grey ridges that stick in the eye, gritty with discomfort. Other, however, Slake and Monochrome itself are far better dressed in subtle silky modulations that allow a flash of blue sky or an orange slip to show beneath the glistening surface.

McLauchlan is definitely someone to watch for the future. She has mapped out a clear attitude, a route to major work. Her current show is delightful and, as many buyers have noticed, a great bargain for aspiring collectors.