This exhibition brings together artists from the U.K, USA and Ireland all of whom use modes of abstraction in their artistic practice. The exhibition includes work by, Wendy White, Craig Taylor, Chuck Webster, Ronnie Hughes and Danny Rolph.

This exhibition explores the uniting factors within each artist’s practice while recognising their disparate and idiosyncratic approaches and relationship to previous manifestations of abstraction.

The title Pure Optic Ray is extracted from a statement by Rosalind Krauss who critiqued the purely optical emphasis in the reading of abstract painting that implied the viewer was ‘Floating in front of the works as a pure optical ray’ . The works chosen in this exhibition also defy a purely aesthetic interaction or consideration; each work demonstrates the artist’s exploration of process, materiality, layering and the quotidian that combine to achieve a visceral and engaged viewing. The artists included also have a commonality in their analysis of the axis between abstraction and representation; the segregated artwork and the clutter of the urban everyday.

Wendy White’s bold, energy bound paintings work as visual scrawls collapsing the urban experience onto the canvas, referencing graffiti the lurid pinks, greens and oranges converge with heavy black paint. As appendages to the canvas White incorporates sculptural elements often using footballs. These incongruous elements work as devices that focus the viewer’s understanding of depth within the painterly layers, while also creating a point where the viewer’s consciousness delves into the city street and the clamour of a stadium crowd.

Danny Rolph experiments with materiality and tactility in his paintings allowing representation to seep into his work through collage. Rolph creates paintings on a clear fluted construction material called Twinwall, (an industrially manufactured polycarbonate). Through this material he simultaneously activates different layered surfaces within the work, condensing gathered imagery and various painting techniques to create the layering. Rolph uses collage in an unconventional sense, collating painterly finishes alongside clippings from magazines, personal photographs and advertising. These elements are all trapped within the Twinwall sheets, which remains intrinsically industrial whilst being transformed into a glossy glamorous painting, allowing Rolph to create an abstraction that remains dynamic, brimming with references, colour, and texture.

Craig Taylor works with acrylic on canvas and constructs his paintings on the continuum between abstraction and representation, the viewer can easily get lost within the painterly surface where Taylor plays with opacity and layering. His painting also takes on a cinematic quality as occasionally at the base edges of the canvas new colours and shapes appear in bands, creating the illusion that the imagery is part of a filmstrip. The sense of imagery speeding by is intensified, as forms that are deceptively abstract on first glance emerge as vernacular scenes and objects, in the guise of couples kissing and slices of pie.

In Chuck Webster’s work on paper subtle slight biomorphic forms are painted in delicate watercolour on antique paper, they take the form of distracted elaborate doodles. There is an irreverence in the pieces as the watercolour shapes sublimate the antique formal gothic script of the paper. His paintings in contrast are studied and seem to rigidly adhere to a formal abstraction. This rigidity is emphasised by the laboured technique Webster uses, sanding down his oil paint many times to produce his painterly finish. The technique ironically creates a sumptuously waxy finish that works to belie the formalism of the subject and activates a tactile surface.

Ronnie Hughes works on paper function as an installation that draws together symbols and shapes that amalgamate to create a mystical language inspired by nature. These pieces act as a counter point to the urbanism referenced in other works within the exhibition. In his work Hughes explores the possibility of restraint and reduction as a form of abstraction. The drawing works represents a point of consideration and quieitude within the language of abstraction, the refinement and fragility producing contemplation in the viewer. Taken individually these works seem close to enabling that criticised pure optical response, seen together require the viewer’s cerebral translation as they build a secretive abstract narrative.