Summerhall, Edinburgh until September 26th
Three stars
They could be pages torn from an art-zine, an architect's portfolio or
a sketch-pad given to pre-schools on a rainy day, such is the playful
but matter-of-fact show-and-don't-tellness of French avant-savant
Claude Closky's new series of pen-and-ink miniatures. Spread across
four rooms in ascending or descending numerical order depending on
which way you go at it, a series of black ball-point pen lines mark out
assorted patterns on white paper sheets that fade into the background
of barely-there clip-frames or matching white wooden ones that form a
kind of camouflage in which even the bare floorboards seem to be in on
the act.
The lines themselves sit side-by-side by Closky, or form squares,
curves and triangles that could have been inked on using an old-school
Spirograph set or else Etch-a-Sketched into being to make up end-of
term games of Noughts and Crosses, Battleships and Hang the Man. The
percentages themselves, scrawled at the bottom of each sheet like an
exam mark, hint at what's missing, with either 90, 80, 70 or 60%
presumably beyond the frame and occupying somewhere bigger. With brown
wrapping paper and green card cut-outs the only colours of the spectrum
beyond neutral on show, they're not the only things here that aren't
black and white.
The List, September 2014
ends
Three stars
They could be pages torn from an art-zine, an architect's portfolio or
a sketch-pad given to pre-schools on a rainy day, such is the playful
but matter-of-fact show-and-don't-tellness of French avant-savant
Claude Closky's new series of pen-and-ink miniatures. Spread across
four rooms in ascending or descending numerical order depending on
which way you go at it, a series of black ball-point pen lines mark out
assorted patterns on white paper sheets that fade into the background
of barely-there clip-frames or matching white wooden ones that form a
kind of camouflage in which even the bare floorboards seem to be in on
the act.
The lines themselves sit side-by-side by Closky, or form squares,
curves and triangles that could have been inked on using an old-school
Spirograph set or else Etch-a-Sketched into being to make up end-of
term games of Noughts and Crosses, Battleships and Hang the Man. The
percentages themselves, scrawled at the bottom of each sheet like an
exam mark, hint at what's missing, with either 90, 80, 70 or 60%
presumably beyond the frame and occupying somewhere bigger. With brown
wrapping paper and green card cut-outs the only colours of the spectrum
beyond neutral on show, they're not the only things here that aren't
black and white.
The List, September 2014
ends
Comments