SEAN CROSSLEY - 'Excess/Support: Liquidity and Mediation'
Futures 28th Nov – 25th Jan 2025
Installation view
CLICK ON IMAGES FOR ENLARGEMENT
A show of thirty-six small paintings by Crossley is a first for the gallery from an RMIT graduate (2011) who has been based in Brussels since 2013. Given the modest gallery space the hang is a little cramped but conforms to the artist’s strict formatting in which various affinities between works are suggested across a grid of four rows. The smaller wall is titled Liquidity, something of a pun on drink and cash, while the larger wall is titled Mediation and concerns a wider range of associations prompted through the particular selection.
The paintings are part of a series of one hundred works, revised and extended between 2019 and 2023 culminating in a book titled ‘Excess/Support’ published earlier this year. The book is also available at Futures. Works are numbered and the book allows the sequence to be studied one per page and suggests an overall concept. The publication was accompanied by an exhibition at the artist’s Brussels gallery, Harlan Levey Projects.
‘Excess/Support’ installation view Harlan Levey Projects 2024
The terms ‘excess’ and ‘support’ are given unusual, not to say perverse meanings in the preface to the book and for this critic require considerable unpacking, even after brief conversation with the artist. Excess is held to be not a matter of surplus or extravagance but something closer to unsuspected potential while support refers to the painting surface prior to work, upon which anything further will be ‘excess’. This begs qualification of when the surface is a work, whether determinations of size, weight and priming of canvas are not in fact part of the work.
Semantic quibbles aside, the Futures show is really a sampler of the artist’s process or project and offers a range of imagery from figurative to abstract, largely drawing upon screen sources ranging from various photography, even of art history, to graphics, including diagrams and charts to text, at least as far as an alphabet. Works come in three sizes, 35 X 30 cm, 42 X 35 cm and 47 X 42 cm and the portrait orientation is predominant.
‘33’ (2019-2023) 42 X 35 cm oil on canvas
Upon careful consideration, the shared qualities that seemed foremost in the Futures show are the simplified, central motif suggesting a close-up or observational closeness and this together with around ten of the works dealing in domestic matters, of food preparation, trays, drinks and sinks suggests the closeness is also one of intimacy or privacy. To this, the broad handing with a light and fluent touch exudes a relaxed, playful mood. This is plainly the artist after hours or unplugged, casually seeing what this looks like with that or after, before or beside it, effortlessly tracing or superimposing one technique or tool with another. In this the show completely succeeds.
‘76’ (2019-2023) 42 X 35 cm oil on canvas
The effect is certainly one of stocktaking or measuring options, yet the format itself – the size of works - discreetly imposes constraints. There are no full-length figures, no distant backgrounds or depth for example (in the complete series a notable exception would be ‘61’ – the full series is available on the artist’s website). Text does not advance beyond an alphabet. Given the scope to sources little of the topical world, apart from a tennis ball striking the netting (‘74’) intrudes upon this meditation on options, at a concrete or figurative level. Needless to say the tennis ball is in close-up.
‘74’ (2019-2023) 35 X 30 cm oil on canvas
The same holds for the range of graphics addressed, where figuration is also available. Restrictions upon subject matter carry through to painterly treatments and technique. There can be no comprehensive audit of painting techniques – or in fact a support – without a world that answers to them. In this the works never quite canvass the full range of pictures in circulation and with it the ambition to provide a general model for painting falls short.
‘22’ (2019-2023) 35 X 42 cm oil on canvas
The artist’s website unfortunately does not provide any work earlier than 2016 and so tracing a development or influences is not possible. However the usual Post Modern suspects occasionally come to mind. The predominance of very light or thin brushwork would seem to indicate a foundation in drawing – there is rarely evidence of reworking or probing for outline – and much of the effort goes into loosening or broadening of shapes, such as ‘22’ converting presumably a particular head or portrait into what the artist calls a ‘notation’ something like an icon or perhaps avatar as part of the spectrum from the figurative to abstract. This is familiar territory in painting today.
A more interesting, indeed pressing concern is the need to declare multiple and conflicting versions, both to a painting style and the world with which it negotiates. Pluralism and the dilemma of the one and the many has been with us for some time. However with the digital revolution and the profusion of online information, this splintering or fragmentation to the world acquires new relevance. Recent talk of multi-polar or conflicting worlds is commonplace and the problem brings with it consequences for pictures and with them the role of painting. Fact and realism are the first casualties.
‘13’ (2019-2023) 42 X 35 cm oil on canvas
In this respect it is notable that Crossley markets each canvas to Excess/Support individually, even though acknowledging that much of their meaning and inspiration lies in the arrangement as a whole. They are many works and yet just one. The problem is one wants the freedom to explore endless permutations but at some point a shared basis for them dwindles to nothing. We have many works, if any, that share nothing or are worlds apart. Pluralism in recent painting is sometimes signalled by a fracture or incompleteness to the whole picture, a lack or loss of cultural coherence. In some quarters this presents as a new kind of history painting or fiction. Elsewhere it has become the norm for artists to announce their commitment to multiple disciplines or platforms equally, yet are unable to say to what purpose beyond personal satisfaction. The trend is to diversify at the expense of consolidation or integration. This is the problem with pluralism.
In parallel with Excess/Support Crossley has completed several projects that complement his play of permutations, yet in isolation lack greater resonance beyond conspicuous versatility.
‘Le Manuet II and I après Auguste Francois Marie Gorguet’ (2019) 210 X 190 (each panel) oil on canvas [NOT IN SHOW]
‘Ouvreur’ (2021) 200 X 160 cm oil on canvas [NOT IN SHOW]
‘Circulateur’ (2021) 210 X 180 cm oil on canvas [NOT IN SHOW]
‘Idiosynchronic 5’ (2024) 119 X 84 cm oil on canvas [NOT IN SHOW]
While such works are ostensibly more finished, more channelled outcomes to the artist’s researches, their diversity however is less impressive in isolation. In fact, as extensions to Excess/Support they actually suggest the reverse in priorities. The real thrust to the project lies with multiple, less finished works, with meaning beyond the individual work in an extensive ensemble.
Whether the ensemble need remain on such a modest scale to individual works or to run to such numbers are parameters possibly worth considering. But the artist stakes out surprising and provocative territory here, resists history painting at its most compromised and the maximalism that chases greater abstraction, looks strongest when starting from things held dearest. Both gallery and artist are to be applauded for such adventure.
