Rupt

exhibition at jerwood artists platform. jerwood space. 2003

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text by David Ryan
ART PAPERS - Atlanta (May June 2003) - Vol 27 n/3

"Located in the heart of the continually developing area around Borough and Union Street in London, the Jerwood Space is a relatively new venue, but an increasingly significant showcase for emerging artists. JAIME GILI (January 15-February 9, 2003), a young Venezuelan artist based in London since his studies at the Royal College of Art, has participated in the first of the Jerwood Artist Platform- an opportunity for a major London solo exhibition at a pivotal point in an artist's career For many it would be a mixed blessing, the architecture of the gallery space is unflattering and difficult to say the least, but Gili has risen to the challenge. On the first wall -visible from the entrance of the space - is an arrangement of photographs featuring close-ups of cars entitled Multinational Anthem (2002). This acts as a kind of prelude to the rest of the show, a small self-enclosed installation in which Gili lays out his subject matter almost as literal research. It encapsulates his concerns within the reality of everyday city life. Here, the relationship between speed, flow, national identity and corporate multinationalism find their focal point in the car, which in turn is viewed as a hybrid of signs. A disinterested and detached demeanour surrounds these photographs that, like a modern day flaneur- or dare one say "train spotter"? log insignias, logos, flags and designs, providing not only the charting of social and geographical networks but also a visual ebb and flow of distance and proximity.

multinational anthem. r-type prints on aluminum. variable

In the next two rooms the display presents series of works collectively entitled "Rupt" (2002) and "Alma" (2002) respectively. With the exception of a large wall painting (which visually connects with the next room) and one long horizontal piece (with its associations of a field of vision, windscreen and bumper, obliquely reminiscent of the format of photographs on the preceding wall), the "Rupt" series consists of elongated vertical panels leaning against the wall. Here Gill has explored various means of markmaking: masked and blocked template shapes (rather like car doors or component parts), and meandering graffiti-like sprayed interjected lines, which exaggerate the verticality of the structures. Overall, the effect is one of a work-a-day approach to painting, with its sense of utilitarian application, or even an interrupted and abandoned work-site. Color remains, in these pieces, emblematic rather than formal or optical: acidic yeilows, cerulean blues and maroon reds or occasional fluorescentsvery much the color of the road sign, spray can or car body. However, color is almost completely jettisoned (apart form the occasional inflection) in the final room. In this series the graphic sign is applied to an excessive visuality of the explosion or crash (or are they simply abstracted glints of light?) resulting in hard edge poplike images in an informally stacked and hung installation.

general view of the second room in the exhibition. rupt series

Jaime Gili's work seems to be a meditation on the fact that, as Jean-François Lyotard pointed out repeatedly, a painting or a representation arrives "too early" or "too late." To paint about speed is to miss the point- literally. This impossibility and paradox seems to drive Gili's work; but we are left enigmatically with various insinuations about the consequences of speed and pace: do velocity and energy give way, inevitably, to entropy? Perhaps. Here, Gili's commitment to the openness of form and interpretation -a tension between semantic and formal closure and its lack - might have benefited from being reigned in, or directed in a more intentional way. This was, nonetheless, an impressive London solo debut."

 

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rupt series and alma series. installation view

 

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