Toby Paterson “Consensus and Collapse”….
At Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh…..
This exhibition presents a large and diverse range of Toby Paterson’s work from 2000 to 2010. It includes painting, collage, photography and sculpture displayed within a specially designed installation on the ground floor. This matrix of suspended panels which has reconfigured the space must be navigated around. The wooden panels create frames around the work, and create a layered viewing experience; one can catch a sight of a work through the reflection or frame of another. It gives the feeling of walking through a city, glimpsing the varying shapes and structures that we are habitually familiar with.
It is immediately apparent that Paterson’s work is informed by the urban landscape, yet the pieces also contain references to constructivist paintings and the work of Mary Martin, Victor Pasmore and Ben Nicholson; each artist sharing a simultaneous approach of art that speaks of an aesthetically abstract, yet politically engaged visual language.
We are presented with a wall filled with photographs of modernist buildings as source material for his paintings. They become stylized and idealized in an attempt to capture them in their former glory, painting onto Perspex, paper, aluminium and directly onto the wall. In certain pieces the forms may be seen in a representational, gestural manner, while in others he may pare down base elements into abstract forms, reconfiguring them into new arrangements. The exploration of neglected spaces is interestingly juxtaposed with a gallery that is continuously cared for.
Paterson is occupied with the materiality of the buildings he paints; their form, line, texture and space; and how they are situated within a social, historical and political landscape. Upstairs, the artist has worked directly onto the walls to transform the interior architecture once again; yet here is a less impermeable structure. The outside is brought inside through the use of bulky, grey, stone-like walls; on them are a number of suspended panels extending out at different angles. They appear to be architectural but are technically not; we are able to see how they have been hung and constructed, and as each installation does not enclose the space, we are always aware that we are in an art gallery.
